


Mirage

by HermitLibrary_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:30:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 82,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermitLibrary_Archivist/pseuds/HermitLibrary_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by Jean Graham</p><p>With the chameleon-ship 'Mirage', Avon and Vila become entangled in a new bid to overthrow the Federation, replete with ever-changing (and ever-dangerous) political liaisons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Judith and Aralias, the archivists: This story was originally archived at [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hermit_Library), which was closed due to maintenance costs and lack of time. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2015. We posted announcements about the move and emailed authors as we imported, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hermitlibrary/profile). 
> 
> This work has been backdated to 26th of May 2008, which is the last date the Hermit.org archive was updated, not the date this fic was written. In some cases, fics can be dated more precisely by searching for the zine they were originally published in on [Fanlore](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page).
> 
> **Original Author's Notes:**
> 
> Previously also archived at Jean Graham's

Was my death not enough, Avon?

The voice -- Blake's voice -- drifted with him down the corridor.

And the others. You do not even know, after all this time, whether they are alive or dead. You have not wished to know. Instead, you have come here. For what reason, Avon? To die?

No.

Not to die. Survival was and always had been the force that drove Kerr Avon. And if it had flagged in the horrors of this past, lost year, then he would find a way to make it viable again.

He would find another way to survive. That is why he had come here.

Willing the voice into silence, he passed through a door at the end of the corridor, coming face-to-visor with a severely-dressed administrative aide behind an equally severe grey desk. She did not look up at him when she spoke. "He isn't in," she said.

"I'll wait."

The visor tilted upward, refracting harsh light. Pale eyes regarded him with calm detachment. "It may be some time," she said crisply. "I may be able to locate Director Troas. But I do need a reason. And a name."

"No you don't. You will simply tell him... that it is imperative I speak with him."

Something in his voice, an odd blend of authority and nerve-thin desperation, unsettled her enough to defeat the rehearsed evasion tactic. She nodded toward the inner-office door, primly stenciled with the name LAN TROAS and the title PLANT DIRECTOR. "All right," she conceded. "You can wait in there."

Avon gave the surrender no acknowledgment, but strode through into the relative safety of the room beyond the sliding door. It was a large and tastefully-decorated office, not opulent, but functional. Beside the computer terminal on the black plex expanse of desk, a pair of holo cubes displayed the images of a graying woman and a boy in his late teens. These Avon studied for a long moment before he turned to move toward the small conference table occupying the opposite end of the room. On the way, he passed the mirrored tiers of an alcoved bar, and hastily averted his eyes.

The gaunt stranger reflected there little resembled the man he remembered. Wanted to remember.

The only comfort this image could offer was that it resembled the face on the Federation's wanted holos not at all.

He took a seat at the table, facing the door. Then, as though the strain of having come this far had suddenly caught up with him, he drew a long and measured breath, and slowly lowered his head onto his folded hands.

Time. That was all he really needed. Time to rest, to recover. A week, a month, a year. Any amount that could be begged -- or stolen. Any place that could be deemed remotely friendly.

Safe harbor. Somewhere there had to be one. There had to be.

Too many years, Blake's voice returned, mocking him. Too many lives lost; too many taken. So long on the edge. So long...

With no small effort, he quelled the voice again. But the faces, the memories, had waited only for his eyes to close before returning, a stark and disarrayed tableau. He was too weary to repel them any longer.

Blake lay on the floor beneath him, dark blood spreading grimly from the ruined tunic. The blood covered Avon's hands. Another Blake, worlds removed from the man he had faced at Gauda Prime, stood over the London's computer housing and fervently swore that he would never rest until the Federation's heart had been torn out. Until free men could think and speak.

And with cold, acrid cynicism, that other, long-ago Avon had said to him, "Wealth is the only reality. And the only way to obtain wealth is to take it away from somebody else. Wake up, Blake. You may not be tranquilized any longer, but you are still dreaming."

The only reality. Had he truly been so naive, once?

Reality, in the end, had been the ultimate betrayer, more treacherous than any of the people in his life. And more evasive.

He was not even certain that he recognized it any longer. But Gauda Prime had been real enough.

The ring of black-clad figures, faceless, surrounding him on all sides. Guns poised. Waiting. Alarms shrieking in the red light. A vision, half-seen, of bodies strewn everywhere around him. Faces he knew. Had known. Vila, Soolin, Dayna, Tarrant. Blake.

He had taken aim at the foremost trooper, slowly squeezed the trigger.

And smiled.

...Somewhere, an eternity later, memory had dredged up a voice. Her voice. "We can do it, Avon," it had purred. And his own confident tones had responded, "I know we can."

The same voice, some distant unknown time after the blood and the pain and the dying, had begun to call his name. It summoned him to wake. To answer. And he remembered thinking that she must command some form of power even in hell, to be here at all. It seemed fitting somehow.

He must have told her so. "But you are not dead, Avon," the velvet tones had gloated. "I would never have allowed that."

He'd found the matter largely academic. What difference, to be breathing and Servalan's captive, or deceased only to find that she also ruled in hell?

"Your friends are dead, I'm afraid." That phrase had become a litany, vengeful and melodic. "You've killed them. Each and every one. All the fools who ever trusted you are dead. Someday you really must tell me how it feels to possess such awesome responsibility."

No.

They could not all be dead. Surely... He had been shot with those same guns, repeatedly. And each of the others had been hit only once. She was lying. She had to be. Just as she had lied about Blake on Terminal. And about so many other things. Though she would never willingly provide him with the opening needed to prove it.

So he had never learned the others' fate. Though in time even that had ceased to matter. Nothing mattered any more but defeating her, cheating her of the final victory. She may have taken him at last -- he was a prize she had long coveted -- but he would deny her the other triumph. He would not give her Orac, and nothing her interrogators tried would change that. Servalan's final victory would be an empty one.

How many months of living death had he survived there, locked in her windowless chambers, hounded day and night by the endless barrage of questions, needles, probes, and still more questions?

Until the night she'd had him brought to her private quarters, and there had been no mistaking what she wanted of him now. The survivor in him had begun to see her weakness then. There was, after all, a way that he might make her vulnerable. Madness, perhaps, to comply with her wishes. But his was a madness no less all-consuming than her own.

So there in her quarters, in full view of the humming surveillance cameras, he had given her what she demanded of him; given it without either pleasure or pain or any pretence of feeling. And when it was finished he had closed his hands about her soft, white throat and choked the life from her.

The alarm screamed almost as soon as his hands had encircled her neck. It didn't matter. Though he had no doubt they would kill him this time, his choices had been achingly simple. Servalan here, or Servalan in hell.

He preferred hell.

Gloved hands clamped the silk robe at his shoulders, wrenched him away and threw him against the hard, false marble of her 'personal' desk. He lay there, breathing raggedly, and waited for an end to it. But the shots he'd expected had not come. The guns that should have been trained on him sagged instead, all three of their owners intent on the efforts of their comrades to revive the limp thing on the bed. He knew then why they would not kill him.

They had been ordered not to. By an authority higher than Servalan's. Whether she lived or died, they still wanted Orac. And that meant there would be more questions, more living death. He would never escape their questions.

The survivor in him had died in that moment. Conceded relentless defeat.

He could see only one way in which he could be free...

Unheeded by the inattentive guards, he had slowly drawn the laser probe out from its slot beside the desk's computer terminal. Not a very easy death, all told, but placed correctly, just above the heart...

"Gavik! Stop him!"

More gloved hands jerked the probe away before he could activate the beam. He remembered a flash of light, reflected off the polished butt of the paragun as it was raised and arced savagely down at him. And then...

"That was an exceedingly stupid thing to do, Avon."

Her voice again.

So he had not killed her after all. Or... was it that they had killed him after all?

"I know you're awake. The scanner says you've been conscious for several minutes. Look at me, Avon."

He willed his eyes to open, to absorb the unwelcome sight of her 'medical' facility and the hard metal framework to which he was secured, standing upright. She leaned across the diagnostic computer, ugly, purpling bruises at her throat the only sign of his near-success, and smiled at him with blood-red lips.

"As you can see," she murmured, "you didn't kill me."

"Pity. I shall have to do better next time." That was an echo of something Blake had said once. Aboard the London...

"Nor," she went on, ignoring his remark, "did you succeed in killing yourself, though I'll admit I was a bit surprised to hear that you had tried. A laser probe, Avon? Crude, surely, even by your standards. You may like to know, however, that I have had them all placed under lock and key." The smile became cat-like. "I fully intend to avoid any repeat performances."

He fixed her with an obsidian gaze, determined and immutable. "I'll find another way." And I'll take you with me, if I can.

"I think not," she said as if in answer to his thought. "You see, I plan to take proper precautions this time. Permanent ones. I'm going to see to it you never kill anyone again."

His puzzlement at that clearly pleased her. She raised a hand, and called to someone Avon had not realized was there. "Estes."

"Yes, Commissioner?" A stooped, balding man moved into view. He was a 'medic,' Avon realized. A lackey in white coveralls. One of Servalan's torturers-elite.

"Prepare the surgery," she ordered. "I want him fitted with the limiter implant by this afternoon."

"Yes, Commissioner."

Avon's head had snapped up at her mention of the implant.

Servalan correctly read a fleeting trace of both surprise and fear in his eyes, and that pleased her, too.

"As you know," she said as Estes hastily departed the room, "a limiter implant is equally effective against suicide. Of course... unfortunately... there are other brain functions which may be... impaired?"

Disbelieving, he glared at her, recalling a time aboard the Liberator when Gan's limiter had nearly cost all of them their lives.

"Memory, for example," he supplied, forcing a beleaguered smile. "You might never get your hands on Orac that way."

"I don't have Orac now." She moved closer to him, expertly laying bait across the verbal trap. "It's a risk I'm willing to take, Avon." The voice became suddenly hard. "And that frightens you, doesn't it? It may be the only thing in the galaxy that does. To have anyone alter that meticulously well-ordered mind..."

That little horror had granted her the psychological war; a victory won in a single, bloodless moment. She had seen the fear, unsheathed and defenseless, in his eyes.

"Well, Avon?"

Naked loathing edged an already-hoarse voice. "Do you want me to plead with you? You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?"

"Probably," came the calloused reply. "But I would much rather have Orac. You will tell me where on Gauda Prime you left him and I will rescind Estes' orders. It's that simple."

Nothing has ever been simple for you, he thought bitterly. But aloud, all trace of the fear now buried under old, familiar arrogance, he said, "You still know how to play the game, don't you, Servalan?"

"I've done with games. Now will you give me Orac or not?"

He watched her for a prolonged moment, and the survivor began to see the glimmer of a new possibility...

"Give me half an hour with your primary computers," he said, "and I will isolate Orac's carrier wave."

"Not good enough." The glint of the predator shone hard in her eyes now. "You will take me to him."

"That," he parried, "is unlikely. Since only Orac knows where Orac is."

"What?"

 

The single word was an imperious command to explain. Pleased at the consternation he'd already evoked, he obliged. "It was programmed to take the flyer deep into Gauda Prime's woods and hide itself. Without tracing the carrier frequency, even I would have no idea where. And only I can trace the frequency."

Scarlet lips twisted slowly into a thinly deprecating smile. "All very clever. But probably untrue. I doubt you would obviate your only means of escape from a potentially hostile base by sending the flyer away. Try again."

"I've already told you--"

"I don't believe you."

His dark eyes flashed. "I don't really give a damn what you believe."

Suspicion warred with greed across the glacial perfection of her face, the latter winning. With one manicured nail, she touched a control on the panel. "Estes," she said. "You will cancel that request. Tell Section Leader Talcor I want Triumph prepared for immediate lift-off for Gauda Prime. And see that a link to the primary computers is installed aboard."

Avon smiled wanly at her choice of ships. Ironic, but perhaps appropriate. He had never even known what planet this complex of hers had occupied. But now, with a return to Gauda Prime -- and Orac -- he might begin finding answers of his own. Whether Vila and the others were truly dead, for example...

 

* * *

Given the primary link to work with, overriding Triumph's flight computer mid-voyage had been sheer child's play. Once he had crippled the drive systems, disposing of Talcor had proved no more difficult. The man had been exceptionally slow for a Federation officer, and taking his sidearm from him had been deceptively easy.

Too easy, in fact. As though Servalan had planned it that way.

He'd known it to be true when he had gone, with the gun, to her quarters, only to find the rooms empty. She was nowhere aboard, and the flight console had told him a life capsule had been launched. Though the computer refused, by obvious design, to confirm his suspicion, he knew there would be another ship to pick her up, to follow him back to Gauda Prime and Orac. The survivor, however, had no intention of handing her victory on such an easy platter. If need be, he would leave Orac buried forever.

It had taken him months to lose them. Months more to at last find safe approach to Gauda Prime and to uncover Orac -- only to find that there remained no trace of Vila, Tarrant, Soolin, Dayna... Blake's base had been dismantled and abandoned. Even the bounty hunters had vanished with the planet's reinstatement to Federation status.

Roj Blake, Vila Restal, Dayna Mellanby, Soolin and Del Tarrant were all on record with Federation central computer banks as deceased. Kerr Avon, he noted with some amusement, had initially been listed as 'missing.' The reading had later been revised to 'still at large,' and the reward for his capture increased to three million credits. Top of the Federation wanted list. Blake, after all, was gone, the reward for him dutifully collected and divided by a Federation death squad, the Administration obviously having no quibble with who had ultimately pulled the trigger. But why was there no mention of rewards collected on the others? Curious, that. But Orac had no clue.

The Federation said they were deceased. And yet...

He'd been granted no time to pursue the question. Three million credits posed far too attractive a lure for the galaxy's bounty hunters to ignore. And that, too, had been Servalan's revenge. Revenge for his having snatched Triumph, both literally and figuratively, from her grasp. He'd been forced to abandon the ship early on, and a dozen others after her. With a battered, nameless ore carrier, and Orac as a guide, he had eventually made his way to Caphtor, and the beryllium plant where-in lay the offices of one Lan Troas. Long ago, Avon had known him by another name.

Gradually, he became aware of agitated voices just outside the office door. The aide's, and another, deep and distinctly familiar, even after so many years.

Abruptly, the door whisked open. The deeper voice said brusquely, "Look, I don't know who the devil you are, but I don't appreciate--"

Lan Troas, silvered hair offsetting dark, piercing eyes, allowed the sentence to die when he saw the face that looked up from the table. He stared for a moment; Avon saw the flicker of doubt, then the certainty of recognition. The man tripped the door control to close and lock, and without turning back, said fiercely, "What are you doing here, Kerr?"

The response was tired, lacking all of its old vitality, though the sarcasm remained. "I'm glad to see you too, Tav. I don't even know how many years--"

"The viscasts said you were captured, all of your people killed. Commissioner Sleer had even announced your eventual public execution. You'll forgive my dispensing with pleasantries, but how the hell did you get here?"

Avon searched the deepset eyes for some remnant of sympathy and found none. Nor did he see any trace of the slender, quiet boy whose younger brother had once delighted in proving him 'intellectually inferior.' There was nothing inferior about Tav now.

"Sleer," Avon began, and then amended the name with rancor. "Servalan... is not at all as proficient as she likes to believe. I took her ship from her. I have taken a number of others since."

Tav took a seat at the opposite end of the table. "More deaths," he said ruefully. "More killing."

Avon's gaze grew distant. "Yes. I suppose there must have been. I... really don't remember anymore. So many have... hunted... me."

"And if one of them -- any one -- managed to follow you here..."

"They didn't."

"You can't possibly be sure of that!" A nervous hand raked through the silver hair. "You know what I have at stake here. It's taken years to build this. Years."

Avon's answer was subdued. "I did what you wanted. I stayed away."

"Until now."

"Until now." Avon paused to draw a long breath, then began again, appalled when his voice broke on the first word. "I... need your help, Tav."

Well-remembered resentment answered him. "Well now, that's a switch."

"I have no one else to turn to. Nowhere else to go."

Tav's eyes glinted, as hard and cold as Servalan's had been. "Don't play on emotions you know aren't there. You never needed me before. You never needed anyone -- you made that clear enough. It's a little late to begin needing now, don't you think?"

Avon swallowed, hating the note of pleading he knew his voice held. But he had to ask. Had to try. "You have helped others to vanish. New planets, new identities. You've done it for others..."

"Others! Oh yes -- small time political dissidents. Malcontent scientists on frontier worlds. Writers, artists, all marked one way or another for elimination because they refused to conform. And all of them minor offenders; people with unknown names and unknown faces. Nowhere near the Federation's most-wanted list, let alone on top of it!"

Outburst vented, Tav folded his hands in front of him and stared hard at his interlocked fingers. "There's nothing I can do for you. Understand that. Nothing at all."

Avon studied his own hands, the survivor still unwilling to admit defeat. "A place to rest then. A little time -- a few days. That's all I ask."

The cold eyes pinned him. "You're not hearing me, are you? Every moment you remain here is a threat to me, my family, my livelihood. Why do you think I had to change my name, begin my life all over again? To be connected with you, even remotely, is a death sentence! And I will not hang that pall over the people I care for. You have no right to ask that of me."

Strained silence hung between them until at last, Tav said more calmly, "You have a ship. Take it. Leave here, and if you have any semblance of caring left at all, don't come back."

Faintly, Avon felt the barriers of something long-constrained begin to give way. The thought of returning to the ore carrier, of continuing the endless futile scenario of running and hiding across an empty galaxy, alone...

He scarcely knew the voice that framed his next words. They came out in a choked, half-sob.

"Help me, Tav. Please..."

The face across the table seemed to soften minutely. The voice did not. "Now that is a surprise. You know I never thought I'd hear you plead with anyone. What happened to the survivor, Kerr? You were always so proud of him. You do remember. The one who never needed us?"

"I don't know anymore. I think... he may be dying."

The admission felt strange, though the knowledge did not. He had known it for some time, and for just as long, had had no idea how to stop it.

A shaken Tav covered his surprise by getting to his feet. "I'll see you safely back to your ship," he said.

Avon didn't rise. He stared at rectangular reflections of the overhead light panels in the polished surface of the table, and murmured softly, "No safe harbor."

"No there isn't," Tav's voice answered. "Not here, anyway."

He pushed his chair back into place, considered it for a protracted moment, and then added solemnly, "I wish it could be different, Kerr. I mean that."

Dark eyes snapped up to meet his, imbued with a rekindled fire. "Do you? I doubt it. I'm afraid we were neither of us ever much inclined to self-sacrifice."

Tav's eyes wandered to the holo cubes on the desk. "It isn't only my life I'm protecting," he said tightly. The chair his hands were resting on received a sudden, angry shove, slamming it into the table. "You know damn well what happens to the families of convicted 'collaborators.' They'd be sold into slavery on some outer world penal colony. Or slaughtered outright -- they don't always bother with formalities these days." Fury made the harsh words come faster. "Don't think I'd ever risk condemning them to that, Kerr. I'd turn you over myself first!"

Avon looked up sharply then, gaze locked onto nothing at all for a long, terrible moment. When the haunted eyes finally came up to meet his, Tav turned guiltily away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that."

An ugly note of both betrayal and defeat tainted Avon's answer. "Perhaps you did," he said. "Perhaps it is precisely what you ought to do, in fact."

Tav wheeled, revolted by this new implication. "Don't be an idiot. Do you really believe I could sell my own--"

"Why not? Three million credits can buy a considerable amount of 'good will' from the Federation."

Angry and affronted, Tav paced to the office door and tripped the lock to 'open' once again.

"I really don't think we've anything else to discuss," he said to the door. "I have business elsewhere. Perhaps you'd better find your own way out."

Avon considered the words, assigning them an alternate meaning that Tav had not intended. "Yes," he said. "I think I'd better had."

Tav gave him a hard look before his eyes dismissed the matter. "I won't expect to find you here when I return. Good-bye, Kerr."

The light rectangles on the table top blurred for a moment and then refocused. Avon heard the door slide open...

"Tav--"

If the other man had heard before the barrier closed between them, he did not turn back. Avon stared at the impassive door for a long, long time before he spoke again.

"I'm sorry," he said to the emptiness.

 

* * *

You said you hadn't come here to die.

"So I did," he told Blake's ghost aloud. "But that was before."

The laser probe attached to Tav's office computer was older, broader-scoped than Servalan's had been. More suited to the purpose, really. Even if his aim was poor, it would simply burn a wider path.

The coward's way? I never would have thought it of you.

Three million credits, he had said, could buy a lot of good will. It didn't matter to the Federation if the prize was delivered warm or cold. Servalan had ceased to care. Perhaps he had ceased to care as well.

The probe turning slow circles in his hands, Avon regarded the smiling faces in the holo cubes. He knew no names to put to them. They were people... family... he had never known, and likely never would know. But they were Tav's family, in a way that Avon had never been. They typified a life Avon knew he had negated forever the day he'd chosen to break the banking cartel.

It had only been six years ago.

But they were six years in which he had perhaps aged twenty, and throughout them, Servalan had never tired of the hunt.

Servalan.

Thought of her made him stare at the holos even harder. The probe ceased turning in his hands.

Think, Avon, Blake's persistent voice chided. Don't you realize that Servalan will wonder how you came to be here? To die here? And how a beryllium corporate executive just happened to know the notorious Kerr Avon?

It was true. An investigation of Lan Troas' background would inevitably follow. And when that revealed discrepancies...

With slow deliberation, Avon slotted the laser probe back into its receptacle.

You can't help them that way. But you can help Vila, and the others.

"If they are alive."

The rewards were uncollected.

Also true. It may or may not be significant. But perhaps, if he could somehow turn the hunted once more into the hunter... trap Servalan into revealing the truth. Not an easy task, but with Orac as bait...

A new twist to the game. A reason to go on.

The holo cubes smiled at him from the desk top. Tentatively, he reached out to trace an index finger across their softly glowing edges.

You never needed anyone, Tav had said, the words a cruel echo of his own cold proclamation of years before. The one who never needed us.

Against Tav's words there came another echo. You care for each other. You belong to them, Avon, as they belong to you.

One of them is wrong, Blake's voice gently challenged. Why don't you prove to me which one?

Avon rose from the desk, willing the ghost to be gone, but it would not be vanquished.

Prove to me, Avon.

No safe harbor. No place to hide.

So be it. He wouldn't hide then. He would face them, and with Orac as a trump card, it was possible he might even win. Unlikely, but possible. What had Vila said once? I plan to live forever -- or die trying.

"A philosophy," Avon muttered, "more profound than even Vila probably knew."

Weariness, defeat and bleak intentions already forgotten, the survivor departed Lan Troas' office.

We can defeat them. Just as we did before, at Star One.

That, thought Avon angrily, was no defeat at all. It was an illusion. Just as you are an illusion.

A long and petulant silence followed him then, toward the waiting ship. The corporeal Blake would have been looking at him, a smile in his eyes and one finger trapped by age-old habit between his teeth.

An illusion...

He had reached the airlock before the final whispered words touched his thoughts, still carrying with them a smile.

Am I?


	2. Chapter 2

The ore freighter drifted, void fore and aft of her, enveloped in silent, obsidian null. Not even asteroids disturbed the emptiness here.

It was a good place to hide.

Her meteor-scarred hull, no longer graced by even so much as a name, failed to reflect much light in normal space: here, the ore carrier was virtually invisible to all but the most sophisticated long-range scans. In the void, such a contingency was, at best, improbable.

Not that the improbable had not been known to happen.

Avon leaned back in the shopworn pilot's seat, rubbing eyes that had long ago wearied of scanning the ship's undersized monitor screen. Orac had expertly pilfered one Federation file upon another, but nowhere in the mass of bureaucratic legalese, coded or uncoded, classified or not, had there been any mention of the names he sought. Oh, the official version was there plainly enough. Vila, Dayna, Tarrant, Soolin -- and Blake -- all listed as 'deceased,' though only the latter had garnered a reward for the death squad logged as responsible for his 'execution.'

A tight smile curled the edges of Avon's mouth: there was a distinctive irony to that, though he doubted very much that Blake would have been able to appreciate it.

Those stark computer entries, and the volumes they did not speak, all carried the signs of careful manipulation -- hers. It had to be. And there-in lay another irony. From the day, now more than a year past, that he had awakened in her ice and velvet prison to be taunted repeatedly with assurances that all of his companions were dead; from that day she had wanted only one thing from him. That one thing sat now on the paint-peeling console beside Avon, whirring smugly to itself in diligent search of some trace, some clue that would enable him to trap her, using Orac itself as the bait. There was a way, an opening, somewhere. And Avon fully intended to find it.

_Or die trying?_

The intrusive echo came couched not in Vila's soft tones, but in Blake's, a subtle prying at the edges of his consciousness that had long ago grown too familiar. Avon ignored it, but as always, it refused to be vanquished by mere default.

 _Is this how you plan to help them?_ it mocked, an almost teasing whisper.

Avon rose abruptly from the chair, temper flaring. "How else?" he demanded aloud, and then in more plaintive tones, "How else?"

*How else _what?*_ Orac's clicking increased its meter, in obvious consternation at the unexpected -- and nonsensical -- question.

Avon turned on it with a snarl. "I wasn't talking to you."

*There is no one else aboard this ship,* the computer responded peevishly. *If not I, then whom were you addressing?*

Avon opened his mouth, then closed it again, briefly embarrassed. "Get on with your research," he said curtly. "When I want unsolicited conversation from you, I'll ask for it."

Orac managed an offended _*Hmpf*_ before adding, *I must point out that visual scan of the data on your part is entirely unnecessary. I am more than capable of--*

"You will continue to provide visual scans," Avon interrupted. He paced the cramped flight deck, hands flexing in frustration. Searching the screen readouts was time consuming, true, and probably redundant, given Orac's considerable talents. But it gave Avon something to do -- an edge against the ever-present threat of terminal boredom.

Orac fell silent, light patterns chasing one another through the ostensibly haphazard tangle of its circuitry. There had been times during the interminable months spent aboard this rusting, nameless hulk, when he'd been sorely tempted to dismantle the sarcastic little box down to its component tarial cells; to cure his growing ennui by discovering at long last what really made Ensor's creation function as it did. But -- albeit narrowly -- he'd resisted the urge. He... they... needed Orac fully operational.

Avon's pacing halted midway across the age-worn deck. Orac had said something; he hadn't quite caught the words.

"Repeat that," he ordered.

Petulant, the computer hesitated before it answered sullenly, *I said we are receiving a message.*

Avon's eyes narrowed. It wasn't possible. Not out here. "Directed to this ship?"

*No. It is a general distress call on an automatic beacon emanating from the Algan civil scoutship _Mirage._ It cites total on-board flight computer failure and resultant inability to retrieve navigational bearings.*

Avon inclined his head and indulged a long-disused grin. "In other words, they are lost."

Sarcasm was a human foible Orac had yet to fathom. *That is what I just said,* it huffed.

Avon very nearly laughed aloud. "So you did." He sobered, moving to activate the freighter's outmoded sensors until he had a hazy electronic image of the lost ship on the monitor. A distress call was really far too easy... too simple a trap. He'd spent too many years evading precisely this kind of subterfuge to be taken in by it now. And yet...

The statistics coming through on _Mirage_ evoked a certain interest. She was rather large for a scoutship, sleek, well-armed, TD capable. Her small cargo hold read empty, and though she was equipped for a crew of twenty, life readings registered only one aboard. That was odd. Such traps were usually sprung with more attractive bait -- a hold full or arms or gems, for example -- and ought to involve more than one bounty hunter in the bargain. Either this one was arrogantly overconfident, or the distress call was genuine.

Curious.

He called up data on _Mirage's_ drive systems: she was flight capable, but with total computer failure she would never be able to navigate out of the void. He made his course correction without further hesitation. _Mirage_ was an attractive lure all on her own. If this wasn't a trap, it might well be an opportunity to better his chances against the Federation and the others who still pursued him.

"Orac."

*Yes?*

"Override _Mirage's_ remaining flight systems. Inform her... captain... that he will prepare to be boarded."

*Such activities are not within my programmed--*

"Don't argue." Avon's voice was ice. "Just do it."

The computer buzzed in annoyance. *Oh, very well.*

Docking under Orac's supervision proceeded without incident. Their challenge had been answered, after a lengthy pause that had undoubtedly verified Orac's threat as real, with a terse, unsigned acknowledgment; a surrender without contest that Avon was uncertain whether to view as suspicious or circumspect. He armed himself as a matter of course, and had Orac open _Mirage's_ airlock before he started across the transfer tube.

She was as beautiful a ship inside as out. In fact, she was visibly larger than the sensor readings had indicated, and that gave Avon pause. At the moment, however, he was not concerned with aesthetics. The airlock had opened onto a polished -- and deserted -- flight deck. Of _Mirage's_ sole occupant there was no sign.

Another ill omen? Or simple cowardice?

Holding the weapon at arm's length, he started for the exit corridor leading off the tiered bridge. Its doorway was molded in the shape of an archaic keyhole, a distinction, Avon mused, that Vila would almost certainly have appreciated.

A subtle change in the electron charge of the air was his only warning of the force field. It came too late. The barrel of his gun touched the unseen barrier, and agony burned a path up his arm, through all of his body.

_Trap!_

He was conscious of his weapon falling, glowing faintly blue with the ion charge of the field. Then the deck came relentlessly up to meet him.

 

 

*      *      *

Sensation returned with the fiery discomfort of a million seared nerve endings. Avon opened his eyes to the sight of a nondescript ceiling. He lay flat on an unyielding surface. Floor. Something hummed softly nearby. He turned his head to identify the source of the sound as twin generators on either side of a narrow door. Another force field. Holding cell. Trap...

Something moved into the nimbus of light at the door. The bounty hunter, no doubt, come to gloat over the catch. Painfully, Avon forced himself to a sitting position, struggling to focus on the indistinct figure. It coalesced at last into a slender blond man somewhere on the shy side of thirty, a man with wavy hair, a charismatic smile, and clothes that looked more like something purloined from an actors' troupe than those of a bounty hunter. The face was... vaguely familiar somehow.

"So you're the notorious Kerr Avon," the figure said loudly. "Rather less imposing than I thought. For three million credits, I'd have expected someone... well, a bit cleverer, perhaps."

"Sorry to have disappointed you."

Green eyes smiled down at him, but there was no warmth in them at all. "I'm afraid I have to make the same apology -- but to myself. Because I shan't be turning you in for the reward." He laughed mirthlessly at Avon's bewildered look. "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"Should I?"

Thin fingers spread themselves in tandem with a constricted shrug. "You're less observant than I'd been led to believe, too. My name is Vaylan. Par Vaylan."

He emphasized the name as though to impart particular significance to it. Avon didn't need the assistance. He knew the name. For the past two years it had occupied a prominent position on the Federation's most-wanted list, one notch below his own. Successful rebellions on eight separate worlds had been Vaylan's handiwork. Not even Blake had managed to assemble a record that impressive.

"Your holos do not do you justice," Avon said tightly.

Vaylan shrugged again. "Neither do yours." Something hard and bitterly cold shone just behind his eyes, out of reach. "Not that it will matter much longer."

Avon looked away, unwilling to ask what that might mean, and rubbed absently at still-tingling neck muscles. Abruptly, he felt power surge through the deck beneath him. His hand froze, then fell to his side as yet another surge, barely perceptible this time, signalled a change in _Mirage's_ drive systems.

Vaylan had noticed his reaction. "Yes, we're underway. Your ship's been cast adrift. Did you mind awfully much?"

Ignoring the sarcasm, Avon carefully masked his surprise. Orac had been left aboard the carrier...

"Oh, you needn't be concerned. Orac is quite safe." The blond man had an annoying habit of anticipating Avon's thoughts. "Two prizes in a single package." Vaylan's teeth were even rows of flawless ivory. "A little creative sabotage on the navigational computers, an automatic distress beacon, some touches of _Mirage's_ own, and the ship herself as bait to the trap. Even Orac couldn't resist that, eh? An invaluable device, Orac. If it's everything I've been told it is, I should be able to destroy the Federation within a matter of months. Better use than you've put it to, I must say."

Avon reflected grimly that the only traits this upstart rebel leader and Blake had in common were overconfidence and a tendency to talk too much. By no means a starry idealist, Vaylan had the iron-edged bearing of a warrior, offset by the strategist who knew his tactics, his allies and his enemies all equally well, and used them all to profitable advantage.

"Orac's already repaired the flight computer and navigation systems," Vaylan went on chattily. "And taken the helm as well. We're on course for Sekros. Do you know the planet?"

Avon stared at the wall. "It's in the Algan system," he said flatly. Orac had initially announced _Mirage_ to be an Algan ship.

"Yes. Domed cities, methane/carbon monoxide atmosphere. Federation-controlled, but inhospitable enough to keep them largely disinterested."

"Your base," Avon said dully. It was not a question.

"Yes. We've never made a secret of it, even to the Federation. But we're very well defended. Very well. I'm rather proud of that. Do you know we've fended off twelve separate attacks from Federation pursuit craft?"

Avon frowned. Twelve attacks seemed far from 'largely disinterested.' Yet Vaylan's having successfully repelled them perhaps spoke more for the declining state of Federation military strength than anything else.

"Why take me there?" he queried softly.

Vaylan's short explosive laugh was tinged with cruelty. "You really haven't got an inkling, have you?"

Avon gained his feet, coming to face his captor across the unseen barrier separating them. "If I had any inkling," he grated, "I wouldn't have to ask."

Vaylan regarded him coolly, almost sneering when he spoke again. "You can't have been all that naive. The man who murdered Blake? From the day you slipped Commissioner Sleer's clutches she's had a death warrant out on you. And for every Federation flotilla, privateer and bounty-hunting pirate out looking for you, there's also been a rebel -- several thousand rebels, in fact -- just as eager for your blood."

Avon's smile came slowly, a mocking façade. "And you're going to give it to them."

The other man fixed him with a knowing look in answer, then without further comment, turned and strode confidently away.

Avon's manufactured smile dissipated in his wake. Out of nowhere, Blake's voice whispered a melodic query.

_How often does irony masquerade as justice??_

 

 

*      *      *

May I offer my congratulations yet again, Madame President?"

Servalan favored the balding Commissioner Arnak with her most ingratiating smile. "You may."

"It was a most flawless coup," he said effusively, and his porcine fingers continually stroked one upholstered arm of her office chair as though it were a lover. "Particularly in light of the fact..." He trailed off, blushing red through his nonexistent hairline. It was too easy to forget that he no longer addressed a fellow Commissioner, but the President of the Terran Federation.

She rose from behind the desk, her gown flowing elegantly after her. It was spotless, impeccable white, symbolic of the restoration of her power, and the reinstatement of her name. "Particularly in light of what?" she prodded from across the room.

Arnak swallowed audibly. "Well I simply meant... well... that..."

"You simply meant that Kerr Avon's continued survival might have threatened my re-ascendancy. Well you were wrong, weren't you?"

"Yes, Madame President."

Behind him now, she rolled her eyes in disgust and swept an errant sleeve back into place above her sculptured wrist. Yes, Madame President; No, Madame President. As sycophants went, Arnak had his uses. In the capacity of advisor he was without any value whatsoever. And as military envoy from the Federation High Council, he was little more than a periodic irritant. She'd found herself considering of late whether his irritation factors had begun to exceed his useful ones.

"You may tell the good Councillors that neither a Supreme Commander nor a President can single-handedly capture every criminal marauding the galaxy." She turned, a soft swirl and rush of fabric. "But if it will ease their collective anxieties, you may also tell them that Kerr Avon has been duly apprehended. His execution will take place in four days, on the planet Sekros."

Arnak's mouth formed a small pink 'o.' "But how...?"

"How is irrelevant." She marched back toward him, red manicured nails raking impatient patterns in the air. "I'm going to be there. My ship is already waiting. And when the execution is over, the High Council might also be interested to know that my security forces will attack and destroy the base of the present rebellion. And Par Vaylan with it."

Arnak's leer revealed short, uneven teeth. "You planted a spy in Vaylan's organization."

"No," she said pointedly, sitting on the edge of the polished desk. "I've planted several. Now if you'll excuse me, Commissioner."

He scooted forward in the chair, but made no move to get up as yet. "Madame President, if I may..."

She waited, annoyed when he failed to complete the request. "If you may what?"

He drywashed his plump hands, nearly wilting under the scrutiny of her eyes, but obviously determined to ask his question anyway. "May I... come along? I've... well I've never seen an execution."

"No you may n--" Servalan stopped herself, pushed off from the desk and paced away again, considering. A witness to her triumph might be valuable at that. Someone to report to the Council precisely how efficient the newly-reinstated President could be. A smile stole across her red-glossed lips. "Very well, Arnak," she purred. "Come with me. You may find this... most entertaining."

The President's ship had been equipped to her precise specifications. Not her usual lavish transport, it was an older, non-military vessel, refitted to match speeds with her Federation escort, but tailored to pose, along with her crew, as members of Vaylan's rebellion come to witness the death of Blake's murderer.

Mutoids would not have served the purpose here. The flight crew were thus human, but humans modified all the same by Federation psychostrategists to obey Servalan without question. She preferred them to unmodified help. Less margin for error, as it were. And one of them in particular...

As the ship prepared for lift-off, she had taken Arnak to the converted cargo hold, to the lab that had been specially constructed there, also to her specifications. The modifieds (how like mutoids the creatures were, she thought; only the lack of uniforms and blood plasma attachments made them differ at all) still worked to ready the equipment. It was not an elaborate facility; quite the contrary. But it would serve its purpose.

"Madame President?"

She realized that Arnak had asked a question, and that he waited now for her to answer.

"I do apologize, Commissioner." She didn't bother to mask the false sincerity. "What did you say?"

"I merely wondered, Madame, what the laboratory is for?"

She smiled. "Oh yes. Well I may have misled you just a bit. I intend to do... rather more... than witness Avon's execution."

Arnak's eyes narrowed. Whispers of Servalan's obsession with the renegade Avon had been rampant for years: the rumors were all plainly readable now on his face. "You're going to take him?" he asked suspiciously. "And bring him here?"

"Not precisely." She paced away from him briefly, halted and called to the modified in drab grey that had been working over the metal sink set against the starboard bulkhead of the hold. "Come here," she said.

The man turned, and with languid obedience, shuffled toward them. Arnak's squint deepened as he approached, and Servalan saw recognition cross the too-round face.

"Is that... isn't this...?" The Commissioner sputtered. "But the reports all said that he was dead."

"Oh, I assure you, Commissioner. He is. My puppeteers are quite thorough. The best in the known worlds." She turned to the waiting figure in grey. "Tell me," she said. "What is your name?"

"Larn, Ma'am."

"And what was your name... before?"

The man stared at her with lifeless eyes. "Before, Ma'am?" His voice was a flat monotone.

"Yes. Before your modification."

The answer came automatically, equally flat. "There is no before."

"Does the name Restal mean anything to you at all?"

The faintest of hesitations, no more than a breath long. Then, "No, Ma'am."

Arnak's mouth had formed the 'o' again. "But I remember this one's file," he muttered. "They said he was resistant to conditioning. Immune somehow."

"A myth which both he and Blake once revelled in perpetuating. Obviously, they were mistaken. I told you, my psychostrategists are exceeded by none. No one is immune, Arnak. No one at all."

If the Commissioner had inferred any threat from that last remark, his face failed to show it. Disappointed, Servalan addressed the modified once again. "Larn, prepare the vistape for the Commissioner."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Arnak watched the man with nervous anticipation while he helped himself to a glass of the President's decantered Corinthi wine. "What vistape is that, Madame President?"

She accepted a glass of the wine from him and led him to a computer alcove, where Larn had cued a tape on the small viewscreen. Motioning the Commissioner to a chair, she said, "Par Vaylan has an obscure and somewhat archaic sense of justice. He has staged a number of executions in the interest of furthering his Cause. Unlike Blake, the man is unencumbered by any tedious sense of morality. He was a military tactician on Alga 4 before the Federation took it over. A political genius, or so they say." She took a chair herself, smoothing the white gown carefully over her lap. "Do you remember Ril Mergen, Commissioner?"

Arnak's limited intellect was having difficulty assimilating her rather convoluted explanation. He drained the wine glass before responding. "The bounty hunter?" He was clearly puzzled by this seeming change of topic. "Yes, I remember. She was... killed."

"Executed," Servalan corrected. "And Vaylan had the event broadcast on an open channel. Audacious, if nothing else. He's never hidden his base. Until now, it's been too well-defended -- or as I'm sure my predecessor would have claimed, too insignificant -- to deal with. But I will deal with it. Irrevocably." She nodded to Larn, and at once the viewscreen came to life with the silent image of what looked like a cryo unit. Arnak cast her a questioning look.

"It is an atmospheric test chamber on Sekros," Servalan explained. "Vaylan uses it, quite effectively, to eliminate his more troublesome adversaries."

While Arnak looked on, two rebels secured a struggling Ril Mergen to an upright support inside the chamber. When they had departed, sealing the transparent airlock behind them, three circular vents opened in the ceiling of the small room, allowing Sekros' poisonous atmosphere to penetrate the dome.

Servalan touched a control, noting the disappointment on Arnak's face when the screen image faded.

"It's a long and rather tedious process." She loathed the bloodthirsty look that had begun to gleam in the Commissioner's eyes almost as much as she loathed the Commissioner. Not that she was squeamish, by any means. It was simply that Arnak's morbid curiosity bordered so closely on the psychopathic. He enjoyed death. To Servalan, it was nothing more than a necessary expediency.

"Death is not instantaneous," she told him. "More akin to an extremely slow process of suffocation. The victim will lose consciousness in approximately one hour's time. Expiration follows within an additional hour. This next portion of the tape," she touched another control, "is one hour into the process."

Arnak leaned forward, teeth trapping his lower lip as he ogled the monitor. It showed him a figure in environmental gear entering the airlock, a sealed container in its gloved hand. Mergen was slumped against the support that bound her. The figure forced her head back, unsealed the container and poured its liquid contents ungracefully down her throat.

Servalan stopped the tape again. Arnak shot her a frustrated look. "And what was that?" His inquiry was laced with strained patience.

"Vaylan's downfall," she answered cryptically, revelling in Arnak's consternation. "It's a stimulant, administered to each of his victims to bring them back to consciousness. Vaylan prefers that his enemies be 'present' to witness their own ends."

Arnak's patience had worn thin. "What's all this got to do with Kerr Avon then?" He put his wine glass down noisily.

Servalan saw Larn's eyes wander fleetingly to Arnak at the mention of the name. Had there been a hint of recognition there? It was possible, of course, that he had heard the name since his modification. Still...

She tore her gaze from the grey-clad menial to answer Arnak's question. "Everything," she said, and her own wine glass thumped to the table, pent-up anger releasing through the motion and further punctuated by her words. "Avon's death is my right. And no one, Arnak... no one is going to take that away from me."

 

 

*      *      *

His name was not Larn.

He'd known that for a certainty ever since the first clear day of his memory, when he'd awakened in a lab very much like this one, to begin the indoctrination. Despite the conditioning, or perhaps because of it, he knew there had been a before, another time and another name, though he hadn't recalled it until she'd supplied it for him four days ago. 'Restal' seemed... well... right somehow, if incomplete. No matter. The rest would come. He knew that for a certainty too, even if he couldn't quite fathom _why_ he knew.

There had been other names, dropped into her conversations with the Commissioner. Avon, Blake, Mellanby. He was sure they were... had been... important to him once. Finding out how would require methods a bit more dangerous than he'd employed thus far. But that was why he'd waited until the final day of the flight.

For four days he had slavishly carried out the conditioning's demands, obeying her orders, her incessant, imperious orders, without question. She'd hovered beside him in the lab for hours on end, with that bloated og-weasel Arnak at her elbow, watching the testing procedures her 'menial' had been taught to conduct until she was at long last satisfied with the results. Penthalamide and cantathol. As a poison it would be efficient, if unsubtle, but the initial mixture was volatile. He'd been thankful for the filter mask he wore when the combination of chemicals had produced a brief-but-lethal trace of sickly ochre-colored gas. Madame President hadn't noticed. Intent on the computer's instant analysis of the new-formed substance, she had been commenting enthusiastically to Arnak about the potential for a swift and efficient 'kill.' The miniature gas cloud had dissipated promptly, and Larn had found no need to mention it. It was a pity though, he thought darkly, that she had been standing so far away.

The worst part had come when she'd ordered the poison tested on a living subject. One of the menials, a dull-eyed, greying woman he had never really noticed, had been brought to the lab already unconscious, and unnecessarily strapped into a chair beside the table where the vials of Servalan's concoction were arrayed. The stuff was muddy amber, clouded and brooding like the pit of his stomach as he watched Madame President administer the dosage herself, pouring one of the vials into the unwitting woman's mouth as the figure on the vistape had done to Ril Mergen. The results were both immediate and sickening. He doubted she'd noticed him turn away -- she and Arnak were both far too captivated with the death throes produced by their 'test.'

"Excellent," her mink-soft voice had observed when the horrible choking sounds had finally faded. "A trifle ostentatious, perhaps, but at least Vaylan will know his 'stimulant' has gone badly amiss -- before he dies as well."

There was supposed to be an irony, or so she said, in the fact that Larn would be outfitted with an environmental suit, as on the tape, and made to administer the lethal dosage to Vaylan's latest victim. She'd positively gloated at the prospect. That smile had made him want more than anything to put two hands around her neck and push her into that now-vacant chair, to force the rancid stuff through her blood-red lips and watch her writhe as the menial had done. But even if he could have garnered the courage, there was Arnak, always there, and the two burly modifieds who guarded the door.

Suppressing the fantasy, he'd turned instead to stare at the jumble of discarded drug ampules on the counter top, substances rejected during the day's testing. One label -- hetrazine -- sparked a memory, and a possibility. What was it she'd said about that one? Not strong enough. It only feigned death, except in very heavy concentrations. He had expertly palmed the little bottle and slipped it into a pocket of his grey lab coat. He wasn't keen on experiencing the probable symptoms, but it might be one means of escaping the grisly task she had in store for him. If only he could work out how to avoid getting spaced afterward, along with the genuine corpses she was accumulating.

Not having resolved that dilemma as yet, he'd decided that answering the questions about 'before' would have to take momentary priority. The ship would be docking in a few hours, her battle fleet having fallen back to hide beyond Algan's asteroid belt until the crucial moment. He had very little time, but instinct told him it would be enough.

What his conscious memory failed to grasp, it seemed his fingers remembered very well. The door to her private cabin yielded effortlessly to his improvised tools; the wall safe indiscreetly hidden behind the portrait of Her Magnificence proved no more challenging.

The musk-and-opium scent of her perfumes lingered in the shadow-lined room, an intimidation he fought to ignore as he rifled the contents of the safe. A few thousand in credit notes, papers, a set of gold-inlaid sapphire earrings, more papers. Half the items found a way into his pockets; the papers he left behind. Something else sat far to the back of the rectangular safe. A box. He lifted it out, drew back the sliding lid and found -- vistapes. A solid row of discs that included the one he'd screened for Arnak on the first day out. It was labelled MERGENS in the same bold typeface that identified the others. Most of the names meant nothing to him. But as he ran a finger over the perfectly-uniform labels, reading each in turn, he paused to pluck an occasional tape out of its slot. AVON, BLAKE, MELLANBY, ORAC, RESTAL, SOOLIN and finally TARRANT, though some impulse he didn't understand had nearly made him put the last one back. With the discs safely ensconced in various pockets, he stole out of the cabin, locking the door firmly after him. She wouldn't likely discover the theft until well into tomorrow, and by then he hoped to be somewhere very far away -- with all of his questions answered.

"Larn."

He started guiltily, quelling the reaction only as he realized that her voice had come over the ship's intercom.

"Report to Deck B for outfitting," the voice said in her most strident, authoritarian tones. "Immediately."

He paled. It couldn't be time already, could it? Not so soon!

"Larn," the voice echoed over the ship-wide system. "You will respond."

Starting again, he scrambled for the nearest intercom switch, and adopting his best servile attitude, said, "Yes, Ma'am. At once, Ma'am."

'Immediately' meant there would be no time to detour past his bunk in the menial's quarters. No time to don the grey modified coverall over his lab clothes. He patted the pockets nervously as he hurried down the corridor. Credit notes. Sapphire earrings. Seven purloined vistapes and a stolen vial of hetrazine that he couldn't see any way now of using. Perhaps he could stash some of it on the way. The environmental suit would hide the rest, but...

If for any reason they decided to search him, he was a dead man.

 

 

*      *      *

The cell on Sekros was even more Spartan than its equivalent aboard _Mirage_ had been. Avon sat curled in one grey corner of the cubicle. Long hours of tedium had turned once-fiery eyes to dusky smoke, anger to apathy, foreboding to impatience that Vaylan should get on with it. Anything to counteract this endless nothing.

Only the surveillance camera, well out of reach, broke the monotony of the drab metal walls. Nothing but the dim yellow light panel above and the sanitary unit set into the floor interrupted the other two planes of the box that had imprisoned him for four days. He knew exactly how long it had been. Vaylan had quite pointedly left him his chrono, though the rest of his clothes had been taken, replaced by an ill-fitting white tunic. Unusual color for prison garb. Perhaps Vaylan was attempting to make some obscure point? Or was it that the execution of Blake's murderer was to be in kind, and the white would satisfy Vaylan's rather sanguinary brand of sadism?

No one had bothered to bring him food or water. No one had come near the cell at all, in fact, and no sound had penetrated the seamless door from outside. Even Blake's voice had been stilled since that first day aboard _Mirage._

Avon had fought the encroaching boredom and depression by trying to mentally replicate circuitry diagrams, star charts, computer programs. They were a way to cheat Vaylan of the mindset he knew this treatment was designed to create. But time, dehydration and the resultant weakness were all beginning to take their exacted toll. He could no longer concentrate on the equations; even simple logarithms obdurately refused to preoccupy him anymore. And somewhere over the course of the past wearisome day, he had finally admitted to himself the simple, unequivocal reason why.

He was afraid.

After all the years spent skirting death, at times even wishing for it; after Cygnus Alpha and Star One and Gauda Prime, Servalan, Travis, Anna and... and Blake... Kerr Avon was afraid to die.

He'd nearly laughed out loud at the realization. His life, at the end, had been riddled with ironies. Not very long ago he'd come quite close to suicide. And now...

He pressed himself to the uncaring wall and fought away an imminent shudder. He wouldn't give Vaylan the satisfaction, damn him. Was the heir to Blake's revolution already broadcasting this cheerful scene to the unwashed masses? Celebrating every moment of the long-overdue downfall of Roj Blake's killer? Perversely, Avon found he really didn't care. But he wondered, more perversely still, just how Vaylan planned to execute him.

Death, for all that he had courted it once, remained an unknown quantity, an unresolvable equation. Continuation... or finality? Not even Blake's 'ghost' had been able to answer that age-old conundrum. Naturally. Tight-lipped, Avon allowed himself a barely-perceptible smile. Because Blake was a fantasy. The spectre of one madman conjured by another.

A sudden noise echoed in the barren room. Avon's head came up. The solid door of the cell had vibrated, shuddering as its locking mechanism released. It rumbled loudly aside and disappeared into the wall, revealing a brightly-lit corridor beyond. Two figures in soiled khaki fatigues moved promptly into the square of light, one female, one male. The latter pointed an archaic projectile rifle at him and barked a single, guttural syllable.

"Up."

The gun jerked in tandem with the word, then swept sideways to indicate passage through the door.

Surprising how difficult complying with a simple demand could be. He found he was forced to rely on the wall for support until sure that his feet would hold him. Determined to conceal the weakness, he shot the camera a defiant glare before walking, with all the arrogance he could manage, out of the cell.

They stopped him three feet outside the door and pushed him roughly, face first, to the wall, where the man held him pinned while the woman manacled his hands, more tightly than necessary, behind him. Neither escort uttered a sound as he was summarily herded through a blurred maze of lifts and corridors that opened at last onto the cavernous structure of a factory complex.

He was marched past operating turbines, up a corrugated metal stair and along a broad catwalk to the door of still another lift, this one flanked by rows of observation windows, desks, and banks of electronic equipment. Avon recognized part of the apparatus as belonging to a life support system: respiration meter, cardio-pulmonary monitor. The rest appeared broadcast related. Remote camera and sound pick-ups, zoom controls and the like.

A door behind the desks disgorged three dour-faced technicians followed closely by Par Vaylan, wearing his triumph like a badge. Pale blond hair, as impeccably groomed as the rest of his outfit, caught the harsh light and almost alluded an aura, an image the man undoubtedly perpetuated. Avon regarded him with cultivated disinterest, pleased to see the too-handsome face cloud with irritation in response. The look vanished quickly, replaced by a confident leer.

"Pretentious and smug to the end, are we?" Then perhaps to benefit the listeners, he added in still more pompous tones, "What a pity Blake is beyond seeing his murder avenged. I imagine he would have taken pride in these proceedings. Wholeheartedly."

Avon contrived to look as fierce as his weakened condition and four days' growth of beard would allow. "It is an even greater pity," he rasped, "that you never chanced to meet. His tiresome morals to the contrary, Blake might just cheerfully have killed you."

Vaylan's leer broke into a derisive laugh that was both forced and decidedly artificial. With a curt gesture to the armed guards, he came around the consoles as Avon was prodded toward the lift. The doors swept back to reveal an open scaffold, suspended above a vast field-length hangar with a curving outer wall and overhead - the edge of the dome. A deep throbbing whine from the nearby turbines was the only sound. Yet belatedly, as the four of them stepped onto the lift, Avon became aware that faces lined the walls, catwalks and railings at every juncture. The floor of the hangar was covered with people as well. Hundreds of faces, perhaps thousands, silent and seemingly uneasy, as though none of them quite wished to be here... or had he imagined that? It was hardly the bloodthirsty arena full of cheering rabble he'd envisioned. Still...

With a jolt, the lift groaned and began its descent to the crowded floor.

Stolid and silent as the green-clad trees they resembled, the human forest parted in front of them and closed in again behind. They neither conversed nor jostled one another as crowds were normally wont to do, yet there was a dark, unspoken menace in their eyes and in their manner. Avon felt uncomfortably like a virus surrounded by rallying antibodies. He wondered if Vaylan's plan included simply giving him over to these... canaille. But then the last of the mass had parted to reveal the glassine test chamber, which he had somehow failed to notice from the lift, and his uncommunicative guards were compelling him through an airlock to the back wall of the unit proper. His bonds were unlocked, only to be resecured to a riveted steel bar traversing the wall above his head.

The woman in Vaylan's party stepped back, slung the rifle casually over her shoulder by its improvised strap, and muttered, "Treg says they die slower in the center of the room. Something to do with dissipation. I can still have the post set up if you want it."

"No," Vaylan snapped, and gazed up at the surveillance equipment set into the wall above the door. "The cameras have a better angle there. Leave it."

They departed, closing the airlock tightly behind them, and wended their way back through the crowd toward the lift. Avon watched it ascend to the observation level once again, where it remained after its passengers had disembarked. Then he studied the rows of faces, watching, waiting, and reflected bitterly that Blake would not have taken any pride in this uninspired progeny at all, even if it was this, and not Blake's own legacy, that had come nearest to finally unseating the Federation.

Ironies yet again.

It was a long time before the circular vents in the dome wall above him shifted gratingly open, and the air began to change...

 

 

*       *      *

The environmental suit made his skin crawl. Helmet tucked under one arm, he waited at the observation station, unwilling to join the others in their ghoulish vigil at the windows. One look had already been enough to repel him, not only due to the grim scenario they watched, but also because the figure in the execution chamber was so painfully familiar.

He hadn't yet seen the vistapes, but he was beginning to put faces to the names on them, beginning to remember things... This one and the name 'Avon' went together, as assuredly as he and 'Restal' did. And there were faces for the others now, too. All but Orac. Orac had been, well, something else again. He'd put it all together, in time.

A small stir and murmur at the windows accompanied a beeping alarm from the nearby medical equipment. Eyes began turning on him then, intense and expectant. He swallowed, fidgeting with the helmet clasps until the toothy blond one -- Vaylan -- jerked a thumb at him and said, "Suit up and get down there."

Vila. Suit up and get down there, _Vila,_ that's what he should have said. Everyone had always tacked his name onto the end of an order, as though there were ever any doubt just who was expected to obey the demand.

"Move!" Vaylan was pressing the stimulant container into his gloved hand and shoving him toward the waiting lift. Vila muttered vague apologies, fumbled the helmet on and clumsily slapped at the door control. Vaylan came with him onto the platform, his gaze firmly locked all the while on the now-unconscious man in the chamber below.

Avon...

Pangs of warring grief and guilt made Vila look away. Some re-emerging part of him wanted with growing enmity not to care that it was Avon dying down there. Avon had tried to kill him once. He remembered a cramped shuttle locker, thinning air, warm tears, a terror born of both hurt and betrayal. And a voice, softly calling his name.

The scaffold lurched, severing the memory as he was pitched abruptly off balance. He stumbled into Vaylan, obliged to grab hold of the man for support. Angry hands grabbed him in return, righted him, pushed his own grip away after several moments of awkward grappling. It had been just long enough...

Vila mouthed 'sorry' through the face plate, but Vaylan gave the gesture no acknowledgment. He seemed more interested now in the oddly quiescent mob crowding the massive service hangar. Strange lot, Vila reflected. They all looked like first offenders on day one in the prison yard. His shrug concealed a shiver of revulsion. He'd seen so-called captive audiences before, but this...

Closing his eyes as the lift descended, he wondered just how far through the press of bodies he could travel blind before he'd be forced to look again. There were too many faces, all of them watching him and waiting. He didn't like being watched. Especially not at times like this.

His right hand clenched the stimulant vial while the left strayed to the zippered pouch at his belt that held Servalan's formula, among other things.

Forging through the human sea on the hangar floor frayed his already-fragile nerves still further. He'd never liked crowds, not even when he'd worked them for pocket change. And this one was so... so quiet. His helmet was equipped with sound pick-ups, but the only noise came from his own breathing and the throbbing turbine engines powering the complex. He'd begun sweating inside the suit despite the air circulator, and the added moisture made him fidget even more.

Oh, to get this over with!

He switched the vials as Vaylan was opening the airlock. They were similar in shape, and his glove covered most of it anyway. Enough, he hoped, that Madame President, watching the broadcast transmission, would not be able to see that the bottle contained hetrazine and not her poisonous concoction at all.

"Five minutes," Vaylan was saying to him. "I'll signal you from the booth when we're ready."

Vila nodded, the helmet bobbing once in unison. He had just noticed something of interest inside the chamber. Another airlock. There was another airlock -- leading outside? Yes of course. It was an environmental test chamber, wasn't it? Vila looked away, hoping Vaylan hadn't noticed him notice. He was relieved when the blond man sealed the outer door and headed back to his broadcasting aerie. For a moment, he'd feared that Vaylan would stand outside and watch his every move at close hand. The cameras would be doing that anyway, but there were ways to conceal things from cameras.

Vila waited, casting furtive glances through the inner hatch at the figure hanging limp from the secured chains. Avon's color was ghastly -- the too-deep sunburned red brought about by methane poisoning, lips a contrasting shade of sickly blue. If he was already dead...?

The thought evoked an unwelcome echo. _If I've broken my back hauling a corpse about, Tarrant, I'll never forgive you._

He might never forgive Avon, either.

Vaylan's hand signal came from one of the high observation ports beside the returned lift. Vila fumbled the inner hatch open, appalled to find that his hands were shaking.

Just a little longer, he thought fiercely. Hold yourself together just a little longer!

What would Vaylan do when his monitors registered his prisoner's premature 'expiration?' Whatever it was, Vila doubted it would be fast enough. Servalan's fleet was poised to attack the moment she saw Avon 'die.'

Another thought stopped his hand from uncapping the hetrazine. What if the assault were to rupture the dome? Or collapse it altogether? Oh, but she wouldn't risk that, would she? Orac was here somewhere. And she would want Orac. So would Avon, for that matter, but he couldn't stop to concern himself with that just now. One crisis at a time was more than enough, thank you very much.

His own breath roaring like a ship launch in his ears, Vila snapped the vial open and gently lifted Avon's head with one gloved hand.

The coughing fit induced by the drug was mercifully brief. The moment it had subsided, klaxon alarms began wailing in the outer complex. The subdued crowd erupted at once into panic-stricken chaos, screams punctuated by gunshots as Servalan's infiltration force opened fire. Speakers above the test chamber door brought the massacre inside; the graphic and eloquent voice of Federation 'efficiency.'

Vila purposely turned his back to the scene and cut the sound pick-up on the suit. He fished his lock pick from the items in the pouch and swiftly released the manacles on Avon's wrists. Praying that Madame President's attentions were now elsewhere, he opened the primary door to the outer airlock, lifted Avon in a fireman's carry, and headed for what he dearly hoped would be safety.

Sekros was an ugly, featureless world. Small wonder the Federation had shown little interest in it before Vaylan had set up shop here. Vila regarded the flat grey horizon only briefly as he bore his burden toward the nearest docking bay. Hundreds of ships lined the dome's forty-mile perimeter, all of them attached to transparent transit tubes like so many oversized suckling pigs. He could see figures running down some of the tube corridors. There were others waiting for them, and the deadly flash of more gunfire. Madame President's infiltration program had obviously been very thorough. With any luck, however, they wouldn't be expecting anyone to board from outside the tubing. What he'd have to face once he got the ship spaceborne was another matter -- one he preferred not to consider just yet.

The closest ship was a class J planet-hopper, small, fast and well-armed. Beyond it sat Vaylan's cruiser, _Mirage._ Servalan had left special orders that it was to be taken intact, and to that end a battle royale was raging in its transit corridor. Vila recognized one of the figures trading shots with the Federation troops as Vaylan, and he was carrying something -- something bulky enclosed in a plain metal casing.

Orac!

Vaylan's forces were losing ground, being driven back along the passageway. Servalan's troops followed their retreat with relentless precision until the lot of them had vanished back into the dome complex. The rebels attempting to reach the planet-hopper had been driven back as well, and its corridor was empty. Vila took a deep breath and bore on toward the ship's exposed starboard hatch.

"Avon," he muttered, "remind me to remind you to go on a diet, would you?" His voice was overloud and breathy inside the helmet. They were still a good hundred meters from the docking scaffold, and something was happening again in the planet-hopper's corridor. Vila saw more gunflash reflecting off the plasti-steel girdering. A man running toward the ship pitched forward and fell. More figures surged into the tube behind him, one of them carrying the bulky metal box.

"Vaylan," Vila breathed, and started hurrying as fast as his burden and the sandy grey terrain would allow. Vaylan had lost one advantage in _Mirage's_ corridor only to gain another -- access to the planet-hopper. And if he got to it before Vila could...

Something tripped him just within reach of the scaffolding, and with a cry he sprawled headlong on top of Avon, whose inert form had already catapulted over his head. The fall in all probability saved both of them. Booster engines roared to life with twin jets of backwash that would have scalded anyone on the platform. Quaking, Vila huddled over Avon and prayed to an unknown deity that the launch plating would absorb the worst of the blast. He had to cut the helmet's sound pick-up again as the roar reached a deafening crescendo. Then the ship was gone, and Vaylan and Orac with it.

Vila got to his knees, squinting through the distorting face plate at the platforms stretching beyond this one. There were other ships launching, many from the other side of the dome. But _Mirage_ still waited at the end of her deserted tube, unboarded. Vila stared at it with the echo of Servalan's orders ringing in his ears.

Take it intact, she had said. Did that mean they wouldn't be allowed to fire on _Mirage,_ even if she were escaping the ambush?

Vila grasped his companion's arm and began to pull the dead weight back onto his shoulders. "Come on, Avon," he said. "We're getting out of here."

 

 

*       *      *

The world came back into being with a sharp intake of air -- fresh air -- and a pursuant coughing spasm. Avon willed his eyes to open, confused when the not-quite-focused image told him he lay inside a medi-capsule. The soft, distant thrum of engines said he was also back aboard ship -- _Mirage_ , if his memory of its drive-sounds served correctly. No sense to that, though. Par Vaylan's idea of a morbid joke, perhaps? If so, it was not particularly funny.

His throat hurt. Four days of deprivation would have brought him near terminal dehydration, and though the capsule had undoubtedly compensated, its life-saving functions failed to preclude a dry mouth and a knotted stomach.

He felt for and located the release mechanism, though the computers ignored the signal until diagnostic checks confirmed independent respiration. Then, with a loud hum, the fogged cover of the capsule lifted away to reveal the nondescript ceiling of _Mirage's_ medical unit. Of what he presumed to be _Mirage's_ medical unit. None of this made any sense yet.

His first effort to sit up prompted a blinding headache and renewed coughing, closely followed by the resolution that it might be more prudent to rest just a bit longer. He heard the door open, and someone with soft, furtive footsteps came to stand over the capsule. Cheerful and droll, a voice out of the past said, "Welcome back."

Avon opened his eyes again, expecting the voice to be a trick, or at the least, simple coincidence, someone with similar inflections. It was neither.

"Vila," he said dully to the ceiling. Then, with more conviction, "Where the hell did you come from?"

The thief made a wry face before he answered, "Not a bad name for it, in point of fact. And I'm glad to see you too, by the way. No bother, you know. You can always thank me later, when you feel better. There's no hurry."

Avon didn't even try to assimilate all of that. "Vaylan is..." he started to say, but his tongue felt oddly thick and balked at continuing.

"Gone," Vila supplied unhelpfully. "But you can thank him for at least one thing. Most of Servalan's guns went after him and his. We sort of slipped through the cracks while they were shooting at each other. They had orders not to damage _Mirage_ anyway. But last I saw, the Federation were making short work of Vaylan's fleet. He got away I think. Pity. I didn't like him very much."

Headache notwithstanding, Avon pushed himself upright, struggling in vain to make sense of Vila's verbal deluge. _"Mirage..."_ he said fuzzily. "Orac was aboard."

Vila shook his head. "Vaylan took him. And I wasn't quite up to rescuing both of you. Sorry." His hand dug into a pocket of the grey lab coat he wore. "Something else you can worry about later, is Orac. Besides..." The pocket gave birth to a small plastic rectangle with a black button activator in its center. "...he won't be doing much without this anyhow, will he?" Vila tossed the activator once, jauntily. "Well I didn't know he had it when I picked his pocket, but in between the credits and the computer keys and the access cards, there it was."

Avon came closer to genuine laughter in that moment than he had in a very long while. But when he accepted Orac's key from Vila a more sobering thought overtook the levity.

"You mentioned Servalan."

"Oh, yes. She was there." Something cold and unpleasant had surfaced in Vila's voice. It was a tone Avon had never heard him use. Bitterness? Revenge? Neither had ever been a part of Vila's emotional make-up before. He wondered what could possibly have changed that.

"What is it, Vila?"

"Nothing, really," was the evasive reply. The voice was distant, brooding, altogether unlike the Vila he remembered. "It's just that... I may just have done what none of you would do before. And now I'm not sure whether I'm glad about it or..." He trailed off, shuddering. "I don't think I want to talk about it just now."

Surrendering to the headache, Avon gave up trying to decipher the thief's answers and sank back onto the pillow. He pressed Orac's key into Vila's hand once more.

"Keep that in a safe place," he said tiredly. Vila dropped it back into a pocket with a wordless nod, and congruent with the action, his features began to grow oddly indistinct. Avon was suddenly very, very tired...

 

 

*      *      *

Commissioner Arnak relaxed in the upholstered lab chair and through slitted eyelids, watched Servalan pace the floor. The President's ship had left Sekros an hour ago, secure in the knowledge that 'mopping up' operations were proceeding apace. There had been no word as yet on whether the bodies of Vaylan, Avon or Restal had been found among the rubble. But she seemed confident that word would be forthcoming.

Arnak, however, harbored no such certainty. While Servalan's attention had turned to directing her battle fleet, he had seen Restal carry Avon's body out the airlock. Intriguing, this curious devotion to a corpse. But since he doubted Restal ranked necrophilia among his numerous other criminal pursuits, there had to be a reason. In due time, he intended to find out precisely what it was. At the moment, however, there was the more expedient matter of Madame President to placate. And a problem: how to bask in at least the corona of her successful kill without losing his head in the bargain. Surely he could find a way to claim some credit. He'd been highly instrumental in the drug research testing, after all.

"Something wasn't right." The President lifted a capped vial of the selected toxin from the lab counter, turning it gracefully over in her manicured talons and studying the muddy fluid inside. "The reaction wasn't the same."

Arnak flexed the fingers that were folded across his expanse of stomach. "What difference does it make? He was dead -- you saw the monitors for yourself. Direct computer links are incapable of lying." Remembering himself, he sat up in the chair and added belatedly, "Madame."

She glared at him a moment. Then the painted face metamorphosed into a dazzlingly artificial smile. "You're right," she said. "We should be celebrating. Avon is dead, and yet another arm of the resistance has been successfully eliminated." She put the vial down, moved instead to take up the decanter of Corinithi wine. "If nothing else, it is at least worthy of a toast, don't you think?"

Arnak smiled as she passed the filled glass across to him. "Oh, I can assure you Madame President, it will be worth a great deal more than that, to the High Council."

She paused, lip of the decanter hovering over her own glass. "How very lovely," she opined in velvet tones. "You will, I trust, see to it that details of my operation reach the proper ears?"

"Oh yes, Madame President. I'll make quite certain."

"Good." On her lips, the single word was a feline polysyllable, rife with any number of meanings other than its own. Arnak had no special desire to fathom any of them. Better to follow, for now. Bide his time.

He'd lifted his glass to meet hers when she suddenly drew her hand back to peer at the wine with renewed interest of another sort.

"What is it?" Arnak stared into his own wine. It looked... cloudier... than he remembered. Starting, he put it down on the table. Surely something so patently obvious would have been beneath Restal's notice? To simply poison the wine... Any idiot would have known she would suspect!

Arnak watched her hold the decanter up to the light and swirl it, sediment swimming at the base of the finely-cut crystal. No... Not simple poison. Restal wasn't at all as dull-witted as Madame President supposed him to be; he would have done something more subtle, surely. Arnak remembered the look in those eyes -- an intelligence that neither 'programming' nor deliberate charade could ever entirely conceal.

Now if he had been Restal...

The Commissioner frowned as Servalan carried the decanter to the lab sink and stood for a moment, still gazing into the depths of the cloudy red liquid. If he had been Restal... He recalled the initial mixing of the drugs; the chemical reaction Servalan had been too distracted to notice, and which he had dismissed as insignificant, at the time. But how to use that? A longshot at best, to second-guess a mind like hers. But if you counted on the first, the obvious response...

"I knew it went wrong," she said with the decanter still poised above the sink. "Whatever he gave Avon was not cantathol and penthalamide. He was saving that for me."

Deliberately, Arnak played the ignorant. "Eh?" he asked stupidly.

"The formula," she snapped, "is in _here."_

With that, she upended the decanter, sending a cascade of red toward the drain. Arnak watched the flow from a safe distance, not at all surprised when a cloud of acrid yellow gas rose up out of something quite cleverly concealed in the drain pipe; rose and engulfed Madame President before she could step out of the way.

Crystal shattered against metal. Another, heavier sound, came close behind it.

Arnak rubbed his hands together thoughtfully as he regarded his untouched glass.

 _"Half_ a formula, actually," he said, and smiled.  
 

 


	3. Chapter 3

He couldn't move out of the way in time.

Without warning, sand and shale broke free from the unsupported sides of the well and poured over him in a rapid avalanche of suffocating grit. Tarrant cried out, but the shout was quickly strangled by a mouthful of cloying dust. He tumbled away from the smothering downpour, felt his back strike the opposing wall, and immediately, a new shower of dirt began falling from above him. In moments, he would be buried beneath it.

Abruptly, the roar of the cave-in abated, diminished now to the soft trickle of still-falling silt, and there were voices overhead; shouts, running footsteps, the muffled clank of something metal.

"Take the chain. Come on, damn ye, get yer hands up and take hold!"

The voice was anything by friendly, but Tarrant, amazed that he could still hear at all, was thankful it was there. He moved one arm experimentally, found it mobile, and tested the other. Meeting with surprisingly little resistance, he broke both hands free of the soil and brought them to his face to claw at the dry earth until he could breathe again -- almost. He choked on the first raw intake of dust-filled air, coughing until the spasms brought tears to his eyes. That, at least, enabled him to open them again. The dirtfall had stopped just shy of his chin; he'd been leaning to his left side with his face down, so the mound had at first seemed to cover him. The spade he'd been using to try and coax water from the dry ground was well-buried now; the rope ladder had collapsed along with the wall.

Something rattled behind him. The chain. He could see it, if he turned his head, but to reach it...

He tried to twist his body in that direction, only to find that he couldn't. He stretched his right arm back as far as it would go, and touched nothing but more sand. Someone above must have been able to see him -- he couldn't look up from this position -- but the chain moved, swinging around in front of him. Tarrant caught it on the third pass, struggled to get the crude loop around him, beneath his arms. When the make-shift harness was secure, he tried to call out, choked, and gave the chain two hardy tugs instead.

Someone above began hauling on the chain.

He was still coughing when, some time later, they dragged him over the lip of the hole, and hands worked to free the chain, to carry him none-too-gently to the nearest boulder and sit him down against it. The other voices went away then, leaving only one.

"What in damnation d'ye think ye were doin', Tarrant? Cameron told ye three weeks ago that pit weren't goin' t' yield nothin' but sand. Bloody idiot."

Still fighting for breath, Tarrant stifled a curse at the belated recognition of his rescuer. Out of eighty men on this hell-world, Durk would have to be the one to pull him free. He blinked in the failing sunlight, taking in the man's beard-stubbled, too-red face, thinning hair above the filthy collar of the prison coverall. Something else reflected in the small, hard eyes made Tarrant push away, coming to his feet against the supporting boulder.

"We have to find water." The words came out in a hoarse, rasping croak. "One way or another."

Durk's grimy hand reached out to clutch his shoulder. Tarrant couldn't hide the flinch. "Ye don't have t' play hero, pretty boy." The larger man's leer revealed decayed and missing teeth. "Federation supply ships'll be here any day now. You'll see."

From somewhere, the pilot summoned strength to push the hand off and walk around him. "I shouldn't stake my life on that if I were you."

Durk started after him, intent clear in the force of his stride. As the man outweighed him by at least forty pounds and had been a decorated combat officer before his conviction, Tarrant had little doubt who would win the contest. All the same, he had no intention of granting Durk a passive victory.

The hand grasped his sleeve again, spun him around. "Not very appreciative, are ye, pretty boy? I just saved yer--"

"You got some problem, Durk?"

The new voice belonged to Kendall -- taller, heavier, friendlier Kendall. Tarrant suppressed an audible sigh of relief at the sight of him. Durk's reaction was notably less pleased.

"Let go of him." Kendall's voice was a deep, deceptively quiet rumble.

"What's it t'ye then?" Durk's gnarled hand released its grip on Tarrant's begrimed prison tunic, and the leer turned on Kendall instead. "What're you anyway, his bloody father?"

Kendall's face went dark at that, anger flashing like moonlight on water in his eyes. Tarrant didn't understand -- had never understood him. For the two years he had been here, cellmates with Kendall from the beginning, the older man had somehow always managed to be there when Tarrant needed him most, ready to run 'interference,' as it were, when Durk and others before him had tried to... persuade... the youngest member of Dauban's prison colony. Tarrant had known about so-called 'protectors,' but his understanding of the obligations involved had obviously differed from Kendall's, who had never asked anything of his younger cellmate at all.

"You want me to kill you, Durk?" Kendall threatened in gentle tones. "I haven't broken anyone's neck for a good long while. I could do with the practice."

As ignorant now of Kendall's motives as he had always been, Tarrant extricated himself from between the two larger men and doggedly continued on his way toward the mud-adobe complex stretching below in the red waning sun.

He heard Durk's sneering comment to Kendall as he walked away.

"Don't never share him, do ye? Selfish bastard."

Despite the sweat, dust and heat, Tarrant felt chilled. He wanted nothing now but to seek the relative cool and quiet of his cell; to shut out the sun-parched horror that was Dauban for one more night.

He resisted an urge to search the sky as he approached the compound's southern door, guarded solemnly on either side by twin impassive mutoids. Dauban's heavens were undoubtedly the same shade of muddy grey and yellow they had always been, and there seemed little point anymore in watching the gauzy night sky for some sign of a ship. None was coming. For whatever long-lost bureaucratic reason, the Federation appeared to have forgotten her most far-flung prison colony; abandoned it to its own resources, of which there were pitifully few.

In fact, they were all but nonexistent.

They had to find water soon, somewhere, somehow. They had to. Because there would be no ship. Not from the Federation or from any other source. No reprieves. No daring, last-minute rescues. No Avon or Dayna or Vila.

The thought made Tarrant shudder as he walked on through the door. He knew he would never see them again.

He'd given up all hope of that long months ago.

 

*      *      *

The computer's monotone startled Vila out of his morose study of the vistapes. Avon had left the flight deck some time ago to investigate the ship's drive systems, leaving the thief alone with the unpleasant task of viewing the tapes he had recently stolen from Servalan's private safe. Vila would have thought the computer tech would be more interested in learning the fates of the rest of _Scorpio's_ crew, but considering what the first few tapes had contained...

#Mirage is now on automatic heading,# the machine announced, its feminine voice sounding thoroughly bored.

Vila looked up at the flight computer's perspex housing, its face panel aglow with oscillating blue lights. It was the first time the vocal circuits had been activated; Avon must have found more to do down there than simply check the main drives.

Grimly, he turned back to the console and ejected the tape marked SOOLIN from the viewer in front of him. He had to admit that finding the tapes aboard Servalan's ship had given him cause to hope; a reason to think the official version of his former colleagues' fates might not be true after all. It certainly hadn't been true of him. And Avon... Avon was the only one who hadn't been officially listed as "deceased." Though now, thanks to Par Vaylan's efforts, he probably would be. The neophyte rebel leader had tried to execute Avon, and in the meleé ensuing from Servalan's attack on his base, had escaped and taken Orac with him. Vila had made away with both Avon and Vaylan's ship, a feat he considered none too small in itself. And Servalan...

With a bitterness that would have been impossible for him not very long ago, Vila hoped that the newly reinstated President could now be called the late President. After two years of subjection to the mental tortures of her psycho-strategists, after imprisonment aboard her ship as a menial, and after nearly being forced to administer the coup de grâce to Avon's execution, he had hated her enough to leave something behind in the lab of her cruiseship; something he had alternately lauded and loathed. But he still hoped that it had killed her...

The stolen tapes clacked together in his hands, stark labels proclaiming the names of their subjects. The three he had viewed had ended, sickeningly, with Federation autopsy reports on Blake, Dayna and Soolin. The tapes marked AVON and RESTAL he set aside, as well as ORAC's. There would be time to look at those later; he already knew their whereabouts anyway. That left only one.

He was still intent on that last tape when Avon returned, striding without comment to the computer housing to check readings on the ship's new heading. Facing the panel, he muttered a question that Vila didn't quite catch.

"What was that?"

Something in Avon's voice was faintly accusatory. "I said why have you changed course?"

"Me? I didn't change anything. I thought you changed it."

Suspicion narrowing his eyes, Avon studied the read-outs flickering across the blue-tinted plex. "It would have announced a course change..." he said.

"It did. I mean I thought you'd done it so I..." Vila stopped, uncomfortable with the familiar look of disgust in Avon's eyes. "Well all it said was _'Mirage_ is on automatic heading,' or something like that. If you didn't program it..."

"Then it's following a pre-arranged flight plan," Avon said tightly. "Straight to Vaylan, I don't doubt. _Mirage_ \-- specify destination of present course."

A moment's pause, then the flat voice responded, #Destination is the planet Dastram, Sector Four. ETA thirty hours, eighteen minutes.#

"Pre-arranged flight plan," Vila groaned. "That sounds familiar. Can you re-program it?"

"Possibly."

Why had that sounded as though Avon weren't at all sure he wanted to? Vila found himself distracted by Servalan's appearance on the vistape. Though the volume was reduced to a whisper, he could hear enough to discern that she was making a personal report of the incident on Virn. A very personal report.

"Dastram..." Avon was repeating thoughtfully. "Neutral planet in the Umbra system. Another of Vaylan's bases, perhaps?"

Vila's eyes widened. "Do we care?"

Avon had come to stand on the other side of Vila's console, hands spread on top of the polished metal casing. "Orac is with Vaylan," he said through closed teeth. "And Orac is mine."

Though he'd intended to object to that, Vila's attention was dragged back to the progressing vistape, where the grisly scene in Gauda Prime's operations center was unfolding yet again. It was the same overhead view the previous three tapes had shown him: Blake falling under Avon's triple barrage, the others going down one by one, beginning with Dayna.

Tarrant had been the last to fall... the last before Avon, anyhow. The tape had been edited to delete Avon's final debacle with the Federation troops, shifting scenes instead to a stark, antiseptic medical lab -- the same one in which he had seen the autopsies performed on previous tapes. But there was one notable difference this time. The life monitor over Tarrant's head was registering...

"Avon..." Vila called the computer tech's attention to the screen. "I think you ought to look at this."

"Pathology was never my field, Vila."

"No, I mean it. Look."

Avon moved stoically to Vila's side, peering at the screen through slitted eyelids. The vistape image promptly dissolved into a curt, computer-generated message that read:

SUBJECT: TARRANT, DEL. FED WARRANT #0579884. CAPTURED 20/40/49  
PLANET: GAUDA PRIME. NO REWARD. PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT: KILLED  
ATTEMPTING TO EVADE CAPTURE. CONFIDENTIAL DISPOSITION: LIFE  
SENTENCE, 20/74/49: MILITARY PRISON COLONY, PLANET DAUBAN.

With that, the small screen went grey, leaving its two observers momentarily speechless.

"He's alive," Vila finally said to the blank screen. "Tarrant's still alive."

Avon said nothing at all, but turned back to _Mirage's_ computer housing, lost in thought.

"Well didn't you see?" Vila prompted. "It says he's--"

Avon cut him off. "I can read, Vila."

"Well aren't we going to...?" The thief turned curious eyes on his companion, who was studying the blue plex panelling with renewed fascination. "We're... you're... not going to go after him?" The silence stretched on for so long that he wasn't certain the other man had heard him. "Avon?"

The voice that responded seemed distant...distracted. "There will be time enough... after we have caught up with Vaylan."

"Vaylan?" Vila echoed the name with unsheathed distaste. "You mean you're serious? You'd go after him before Tarrant?"

Again, he received no reply. Avon's slender hands traced the edge of a seam in the semi-transparent plex casing, stopped, pressed inward, and drew part of the panelling away to reveal the circuitry beneath. Vila popped the vistape from its slot before he got up to go to the computer expert's side and peer over his shoulder. "Well if you're not going to answer my question, you can at least tell me what the hell you're poking about with in there!"

The ire in the demand seemed to take Avon aback somewhat; the Vila of old would never have spoken to him that way. The tech drew back from the panel to fix the smaller man with an oddly bemused look. "Do you know why Servalan left orders that this ship was to be captured intact?" he asked.

The disgust in Vila's voice remained. "Do I care?"

"This is why." Avon indicated the open panel. To Vila, it looked like nothing but common computer circuitry; the only electronics he understood were those designed to lock or unlock doors.

"Servalan wants a tangle of wires and a lot of circuit boards? That's thrilling news, Avon. Why don't you get to the point? I seem to bore rather more easily these days than I used to."

Avon's eyes widened minutely at that, but he put down the removed panel and with one hand, indicated a spherical object perhaps six inches in diameter, embedded deep within the wiring. It glowed faintly, violet light suffusing rainbow colors surrounding it.

Vila squinted. "What is it?"

"If the diagrams I found below are accurate, it is a device Servalan would pay quite dearly to possess. The Federation have been trying to perfect one for decades."

"One what? It's not a teleport."

"No. It is an operational refractory shield."

"Wonderful. I know exactly what I knew before, which is nothing. Avon, will you stop playing games and explain this thing, and what it has to do with not going after Tarrant?"

Avon swung away so quickly that Vila had to step back to avoid being walked on. "Refractory shielding amounts to a virtually invincible ship," he said rapidly, words set to the rhythm of his feet as he paced. "It does precisely what the name implies; refracts sensor scans, of all varieties."

The meaning of that dawned on Vila along with a host of new possibilities. "You mean... it's invisible? Like the shield you built for _Liberator?"_

"Far more sophisticated than that" Avon stopped pacing to regard the computer again. "It can be programmed to appear as anything -- any asteroid, any ship -- or as nothing at all. And it is as effective on visual scan as it is on automatic sensors." Vila could hear rapt admiration in the computer tech's voice. "Invisibility, or illusion -- at the proverbial touch of a button."

The thief looked morosely at the pulsating orb inside the computer housing and murmured, "No wonder Servalan wanted it."

#Flight time remaining,# the computer announced primly, #twenty-nine hours, fifty-eight minutes.#

Avon shot it an indulgent-but-annoyed look. "Thank you," he said dully.

"Where did Vaylan get a ship like this?" Vila wondered aloud. "He couldn't have built it. He didn't have the brains for that."

Avon's half-smile concurred with that. "According to the plans," he said, "it is from the Tragal system. An experimental craft intended solely for defensive purposes."

"Defense against the Federation, I suppose."

"None other."

"Well I'm glad you've read the owner's manual." Vila reclaimed his chair in front of the now-blank viewer and idly ran a finger over the last two vistapes, the ones with his and Avon's names on them. "Vaylan must have stolen it."

Avon grinned, a full display of teeth that was even rarer these days than it had been aboard the _Liberator._ "I believe the accepted terminology is 'appropriated for the cause,' or words to that effect."

"Yeah, well, words to that effect are taking us right into Vaylan's lap. Are you gonna reprogram that thing or aren't you?"

Avon circled the primary console, settling into a chair three stations away from Vila. His gaze fell in turn on the computer, on the console in front of him and finally on his companion, who returned a disappointed frown.

"You're not." It wasn't a question.

"I have a certain curiosity to satisfy as to whether Vaylan ever learned to detect the supposedly undetectable."

"Eh?" Vila thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "He won't be able to see us coming."

Avon spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. "The ship was preprogrammed to head for Dastram. The question is, was Vaylan expecting it to have passengers -- other than himself?"

Vila scowled. "I still think we ought to go after Tarrant."

"There will be time for that when we have finished here."

"You don't know that! I've heard about Dauban. It's a space fleet penal planet; a desert world, where the Federation dumps military 'embarrassments.' Deserters, awols, insubordinates, people who forget to say 'yes sir' in the right tone of voice. Tarrant may have thought he was tough, but two years in a place like that..."

"Would probably kill him," Avon finished dispassionately. "In which case, it would hardly make any difference, would it?" He stared hard at _Mirage's_ computer alcove. "We go after Orac first. Then, assuming Servalan's records are not yet another trap, we can investigate Dauban."

"Servalan," Vila repeated the name as though it were soured wine. "I'd give a lot to have Orac back right now, so he could tell me if she's still alive, or..."

Avon leaned back in the flight chair wearing a triumphant look. "In good time, Vila," he promised. "All in good time."

 

*      *      *

Nils Arnak, former Commissioner, appointed Vice President and acting President of the Terran Federation, surveyed the executive offices with approval from behind the polished desk, comfortable now that he had replaced her custom-fitted chair with one molded to his own more ample proportions. The intercom squawked for perhaps the hundredth time that day, and he slapped at it desultorily, not bothering to disguise his peevishness at this new interruption.

"What is it now?"

Unruffled, the disembodied voice from somewhere beyond the President's inner offices said, "Section Leader Trienn has arrived, sir. You sent for her yesterday?"

"Did I?" Arnak feigned indifference. He toyed briefly with the notion of making her wait, then dismissed the thought; he was far too anxious to get on with this. "Send her in, then," he ordered and cut the circuit. Unconsciously, he ran a hand through his fringe of once-brown hair and wet his lips with a nervous, darting tongue. His eyes fell briefly on a door, magno-locked and security coded, inset in the ornate wall to the left of the desk. It was nearly hidden from view by the oversized flag of the Terran Federation that stood mounted on a bronze display pole beside it.

The entry-code chimed, and Arnak turned his attention back to the room's main door, through which a woman in fleet uniform marched, all business down to the military stance she maintained when she stopped in front of the desk. Close-cropped blonde hair framed a hard, if not altogether unattractive face, and the uniform hung loosely on a form that was lithe if too thin for his taste. Arnak chewed his lip for a moment before he said, "You're Trienn?"

Grey eyes regarded him coolly. "I was told the President had sent for me."

Arnak bristled at the tone of dismissal. "The President is away," he said, more at home with the lie now that he had practiced it for some days. "In the interim, I am her proxy, endowed with full authority by Madame President's personal directive. Would you care to hear the tape?"

He watched her consider that, weigh the probable consequences and then concede.

"No sir," she said.

Arnak smiled to himself. Politics could be so invigorating. One of these times, a subordinate like this one was going to take him up on that offer, at which point he would play the voice-synthesized tape that had already convinced the High Council of the authenticity of his appointment -- and summarily order the subordinate's execution. Something to look forward to.

"Do you know the Tragal system, section leader?" he asked with mock politeness. Best to start at the beginning. One never knew just how much the enlisted personnel had heard through the proverbial grapevine.

Her eyes came to life just a bit. "The _Mirage_ project?" she queried, a distinct note of interest in the voice now.

"Ah," Arnak clucked. "So you do know of it."

"It was an open secret... sir." She added the final appellation with seeming reluctance. "I was present for the fleet action against rebel activity on Sekros recently. We had standing orders to take _Mirage_ intact."

"But you didn't."

To her credit, she didn't flinch at the threat implicit in his words. "No sir," she said flatly, and Arnak wondered if anything he'd said had really intimidated her at all. A cool one, this. Probably had refrigerant for blood.

"Well you're going to have another chance at it," he told her. "As well as a chance for promotion to space commander, if you deliver. You see it seems our elusive Project _Mirage_ has been stolen -- again."

"Sir?"

Arnak grimaced, broken teeth showing behind thin lips. "That rebel Vaylan stole it from the Tragals -- now someone's stolen it from him. If there's one thing the Federation doesn't tolerate well, it's people stealing out from under us before we can do it."

Something almost akin to a smile tugged at the corner of Trienn's mouth. "Yes sir," she said.

"You may have a starburst mark 5 and the crew of your choice," Arnak offered, impressed at his own magnanimous impulse. "Our information is that the rebellion may have a second, even more substantial base established on Dastram. It might be a good place to begin looking -- surreptitiously, of course."

"Of course. And, sir..."

Arnak looked at her, waiting. "Yes?"

"Do we know who is in current control of this ship?"

"Oh yes. We have a reasonable idea." He knit his chubby fingers together and leaned back in the new chair. "Two ghosts," he said snidely. "Both listed as dead on the official records. Kerr Avon and Vila Restal."

This time the interest in her eyes was very much apparent, though it was covered quickly. Arnak hadn't missed the glimmer.

"You know them?" he wondered.

"Of them," was all she admitted. "They were part of Blake's crew." Then, when he was sure nothing more would be forthcoming, she asked softly, "Were there any other 'unofficial' survivors of that crew?"

"Possibly. Why do you ask?"

She hesitated. "I... have certain personal interests in the factual disposition of one Del Tarrant... sir."

"Ah yes. The former space captain." Arnak flexed his interlaced fingers thoughtfully. So she was human after all. He made a mental note to track down information on when and where -- and how well -- she had known Del Tarrant. "I'm sure something can be arranged," he said unctuously. "I'll let you know."

Distrust marred the return gaze. "Thank you sir."

"I think that will be all for the moment, section leader."

"Sir." She nodded at the dismissal, spun and marched formally out again. Arnak stared at the closed door for a protracted moment before he touched the intercom control again.

"Yes sir?" the detached voice responded immediately.

"Hold all my calls for the next half hour."

"Yes sir."

Scowling, he signed off, then just to be certain, tripped the magno lock on the outer door. A nearby control released a similar lock on the door behind the flag to his left. He didn't look at it yet. He ordered wine from the desktop dispensary instead; Corinthi wine, delivered in an elegant crystal decanter. With a glass of the deep red liquid in hand, he approached the door now, flipped the tail of the 'sacred' banner irreverently out of the way, and placed his hand over the lighted scanner inset beside it. With an almost undetectable hum, the computer read his palm print, deactivated the secondary lock, and opened the door.

Arnak stepped into a sterile white room, devoid of anything but the single coffin-like structure set against the opposing wall. It was cold in here, as chill as the mist that frosted the cylindrical chamber from the inside, and he shivered involuntarily as the door slid shut behind him and the lights came automatically to life, responding to the presence of body heat.

Gathering his courage, he approached the cryo unit and peered down through the fogged plex at the figure entombed there-in. The exquisite features were still intact; blood red lips, shaved ebony hair, painted lashes resting on pale cheeks in a similitude of contentment.

Arnak studied it for several moments before his gaze fell back to the wine glass in his hand. "Odd how one acquires tastes," he said to the unresponsive chamber. "This wine, for example. I never really cared for it all that much before."

The form beneath the cryo hood slept on, oblivious to his words, his presence and the world beyond.

Arnak held the glass up in mock salute. "I rather enjoy it now, though." The glass went higher, a symbolic toast. "To your health, Madame President."

He drank the wine in one swallow.

 

*      *      *

The cell had neither door nor lock. On Dauban there was no need for such confinements; the planet itself was a prison, and there was, literally, nowhere to go.

Tarrant collapsed on the bunk, oblivious to years' accumulation of grime on the tattered mattress. His tunic was in even worse condition, torn and filthy from the week-long search for a viable well and from the lack of any facility for cleansing either clothing or person, but he was past caring, past noticing the discomfort of it at all any more. Today's efforts had proven as futile as all the others before it. No water. No sign of a supply ship. No hope that Dauban's eighty exiled convicts would be able to survive much beyond the two or three days their paltry remaining stores would sustain them. Four deaths had already resulted from fighting over the dwindling supplies; deaths which their mutoid guardians had done nothing to prevent. Tarrant had a morbid suspicion as to why. Without benefit of Federation stores, the modifieds had no regular access to the blood plasma necessary for their own survival...

Wearily, he relegated that thought to a part of his mind reserved for problems to be dealt with in their turn, and tried to concentrate instead on where they might attempt to dig tomorrow. He heard the scuff of shoes in the corridor, and assuming it was only Kendall returning to the cell, did not look up. The footsteps, lighter than they ought to be, moved into the small adobe-walled cubicle and approached the bunk where Tarrant lay.

It wasn't until the heavy hand clutched the back of his tunic that Tarrant registered an alarming reality: the newcomer was not Kendall.

"All alone, pretty boy?" Durk's gravel voice was rife with lewd intentions as he hauled Tarrant roughly to his feet and bore him to the nearest wall, pinning him there. "Your daddy's gone hunting, see. I told 'im there was another cave-in at dig twelve. Oughta take 'im at least an hour t'find out there ain't no one down there. Long enough for you an' me to--"

The sentence ended in a strangled cry. Tarrant had brought one knee up and tried to slam it into the part of Durk's anatomy that had been pressed closest to him. Though his leverage was poor, the kick connected. The man fell away, swearing, but recovered quickly enough to head off the pilot's effort to dive for the door. Tarrant's hand sought and found a metal flagon -- one of Kendall's few possessions -- that had been sitting on the dusty ledge near the door, and wielded it as a weapon. The lip was sharp enough to cut, as Durk's next attempt to grab him bore out. Nursing a sliced hand against his own filthy tunic, the bigger man leered at him, maneuvering to herd him once again to the wall.

"Ye like it rough? Two can play that game, y'little bastard."

From somewhere, Durk's injured hand produced a crudely-fashioned knife. It was little more than a sharpened wedge of scrap metal, but Tarrant had no doubt it could kill efficiently enough. He backed to the wall with the flagon held defensively in front of him, prepared to deflect the attack in any way he could, and Durk closed after him, blood from his cut hand already staining the ragged edges of the improvised blade.

"Don't matter t'me if yer a little damaged." He grunted, a sound half way between disgust and laughter. Then, with a vile grin, he added, "It don't even matter t'me if yer dead."

Tarrant waited until the man had come within arm's length. Then, when the knife moved, he swung at it savagely with the tankard, intending to knock the weapon away, to get it out of Durk's hand if he could. His adversary foresaw the action and like a fencer, parried and swung under the blow, driving straight for him with the blade. Tarrant tried to lunge right, only to be trapped by Durk's advancing left arm. The knife found its mark and he cried out, feeling it penetrate flesh and lance painfully over a rib. He brought both hands up, and as though from afar, heard the flagon bounce noisily to the stone flooring. His fingers closed over the knife and the blood-soaked fist still grasping it, but he could no longer find the strength to exert any force against them. He felt suddenly drained, as though he had been dying for a long time now and all these weeks spent struggling for survival had merely been a dream; a useless diversion that had no more than delayed the execution. Life sentence, death sentence. On Dauban, they were one and the same.

Durk's breathy laughter came close in his ear then. "Light-headed, are ye, pretty boy? Don' worry none. It'll pass quick enough." He jerked the knife free, knocking the probing hands away and evoking a gasp from his victim. Tarrant felt himself being lifted bodily and redeposited face down on the cell cot. Then came the rasping sound of fabric tearing, and the heavy, guttural wheeze of Durk's breathing as he worked to clear away this final obstruction.

Tarrant buried his face in the oily ruin of the mattress and tried to will himself unconscious, but that very will, as cruel as it was often capricious, denied him.

Something made a peculiar noise, like the _chunk_ of fresh meat going onto the roasting spit. He heard Durk utter a small, surprised squeak before the hands that had gripped what remained of his tunic jerked reflexively and fell away. Tarrant coaxed his eyes open, lifted his head to look...

And saw Kendall standing, legs spread, over Durk's inert form. From the back of the former combat officer's skull, the distinctive shape of a winch hook protruded, its pointed tip well buried in the crushed mass of flesh and bone. Tarrant looked away again and fought down the dual urges to be ill and incredibly, to cry. A part of him wanted all of it to end here, to simply let him bleed to death and have done with it. But then Kendall's hands, firm and caring, were turning him and probing under the ragged, blood-soaked tunic to examine the wound. Footsteps, heavier than Durk's had been, moved away from the cot and returned seconds later. Water sloshed inside a metal container; the ration bottle, Tarrant realized fuzzily, and then he caught his breath sharply as a dampened cloth was pressed against his ribcage, and Kendall applied a gentle pressure.

"No..." The protest was feeble, delivered in a voice he would scarcely have recognized as his own.

"Shut up." The response, though it brooked no argument, conveyed no anger either. "It isn't much more than a glorified scratch, but if I don't get it clean you could as easily die of the infection. Hold still."

"Why waste the water at all then?" The words came out in a near-sob. "I'll only die slower."

Ignoring the objection, Kendall continued working, tipping the ration bottle to soak a relatively clean corner of the cloth. "No wonder you got into trouble," he muttered. "Never learned to follow orders. Now be quiet or so help me I'll use this to muzzle you."

Chastised, Tarrant fell silent and bit his lip to stifle any involuntary admissions that Kendall's efforts were hurting him. When the older man had completed his ministrations, he pressed Tarrant's own hand over the carefully positioned cloth.

"Hold it there," he admonished. "I'll go and see what's still in medical stores. We ought to at least still have some bandaging, I think."

"Kendall..."

The other man turned back, gazing over the dead thing on the floor as though it weren't there at all. "Eh?" he said casually.

Tarrant had searched the pale green eyes for an answer before he'd asked the question, but as always, there was no hint of explanation there; nothing but the familiar measure of Alpha grade intelligence devoid, in Kendall's case, of the customary arrogance.

"You never told me why."

The friendly eyes feigned ignorance. "Why what?"

"Two years," Tarrant said weakly. "They hated you, you know. All of them. For keeping me. The rest of them only ever wanted... one thing. And you never asked for that. So why?"

He thought he saw a flicker of something akin to discomfort cross the bearded face, only to be vanquished again. His cellmate gestured at Durk's corpse with one protruding thumb and smiled.

"I'll, uh, see if I can't get someone to clean up the mess while I'm about it, shall I? We'll give him to our mutoid friends. Keep the little vampires off our necks that much longer, anyhow."

And with that he was gone, broad footsteps echoing down the outer corridor until they had faded into nothing.

Tarrant closed his eyes again and tried unsuccessfully to draw a breath that wouldn't hurt. Typical of Kendall, even now, not to answer a personal question. After two years, no one on Dauban even knew what crime had sent him here, let alone the reason for his fierce protectiveness toward the man with whom he quartered.

Ironically, it was Durk who had unwittingly provided the only clue. Remembering the look in Kendall's eyes when the brutish convict had inquired, 'What're you, his bloody father?' Tarrant thought that at last, he knew some small part of the answer...

 

*      *      *

The planet Dastram wore a veritable necklace of orbiting ships, all of them, Avon mused, undoubtedly "appropriated for the cause." It was an odd choice of worlds for a rebel base, covered as it was by ocean. But then, he supposed, a man like Vaylan might have looked upon it as an ideal hiding place.

 _Mirage's_ refractory screening had thus far borne out the claims of her builders' diagrams: their approach to the planet had gone unchallenged. Avon had ordered full stop, all the same, several thousand spacials out, and sat now behind the ship's primary control console, watching the oblate green planet fill the viewscreen.

#Automatic programming requires the establishment of stabilized orbit,# _Mirage_ protested mildly. She had not disobeyed Avon's command to hold position here, provided the status was to be temporary, but he doubted she would tolerate any further encroachment on the program Par Vaylan had instated. In the meantime, all the same, he intended to obtain the answers to some vital questions.

"Do you have data on the whereabouts of Par Vaylan?" he asked the computer. "Is he aboard one of the orbiting vessels?"

#I have data,# the mechanized voice replied. #Subject Vaylan is located at co-ordinates 491-04-90.#

Avon frowned. "That is a planetary reference point."

#Affirmative.#

"Then there are sub-oceanic domes?"

#Negative.#

"Explain."

The usually-toneless voice went up the scale at least one full tone. #Specify,# it demanded curtly.

With a tight smile, Avon said, "Relate data regarding nature of human habitation on Dastram's surface."

The viewscreen dissolved promptly into a pre-recorded image out of _Mirage's_ databanks. It showed him a seascape dotted with circular structures that loomed like gigantic mushrooms out of the ocean. They were supported by single pedestals that widened from a tapered segment rising from the water up to a base matching the circumference of each enormous disk. Avon estimated that each was large enough to contain a small town, and he found the architectural dynamics involved fascinating. Either the planet had very shallow oceans, or whoever had created these communities had managed to solve some promethian construction problems. Not to mention the expense...

Laying aside his curiosity for the moment, he plied _Mirage_ with yet another question. "Are there any landing bays located on the surface?"

#For shuttle and flyer craft only.# Light ran in sequential patterns up and down the translucent blue plex of the computer's housing. #Larger vessels remain in geostationary orbit.#

Avon considered that, reflecting that invisibility would quickly become a liability in a parking orbit that populous, and since the refractory screening was unlikely to extend itself to any of _Mirage's_ three small flyers...

"Is this ship maneuverable within a planetary atmosphere?" he asked abruptly.

#Affirmative.#

Avon couldn't help a faint smile at the insistence on formal terminology. " 'Yes' will do," he told it indulgently.

Without missing a beat, the computer announced primly, #Yes.#

"Better. Now tell me if we are capable of flying in under full screen, penetrating atmosphere and launching a flyer -- all without being detected." There were times when he marvelled at how complex life could be without the benefit of a working teleport system. If he ever hoped to reconstruct one, he was going to need Orac, and Orac was down on that planet, with Vaylan.

#The scenario as described is possible,# _Mirage_ answered. #However, detection probability on unscreened flyer craft is approximately seventy-nine point o-three-two percent.#

"Approximately," Avon mimicked with a laugh, and pressed a control to restore the planet's ovoid image to the viewscreen. "I'll take my chances, thank you just the same."

"Chances with what?" The sleepy voice belonged to Vila, who had entered the flight deck from the only corridor, still rubbing his eyes. When Avon had answered the question, the thief slid into a chair several flight stations away, and blinking at the bright green sphere on the screen with its dotted ring of orbiting ships, said hazily, "I'm sorry I asked."

Avon ignored the remark. _"Mirage,"_ he said, "relate the specific concluding maneuvers of your pre-programmed flight plan."

The blue lights fluctuated rapidly. #Establish synchronous orbit with deflection capability non-functional,# the soft voice replied. #Notification of arrival to be transmitted to co-ordinates 491-04-90.#

"Wonderful," Vila interjected before Avon could comment. "The dog goes home and then calls its master. You can stop it sending that message, can't you?" His question fell on considered silence as Avon rose and moved to study the viewscreen at closer quarters, its muted light reflecting twin patterns in his eyes. Vila came to stand beside him, the worry in his voice undisguised. "Avon?"

 _Mirage's_ announcement suggested new possibilities Avon had not considered until now. "There is a pre-atomic axiom," he said quietly, "about the mountain coming to Mohammed."

Vila's eyebrows moved closer together in consternation. "Eh?" he said.

"Vaylan has no reason to suspect that anyone is aboard. You said yourself that he escaped Sekros before you broke into _Mirage."_

"The troops drove him off," Vila recalled, still puzzled. "He took another ship."

"And he still believes that I am dead."

"Probably." Vila looked at him cagily, beginning to catch on. "I don't think I like what you're planning," he muttered.

The return gaze was mock innocence underscored with cunning. "Probably," Avon echoed. He favored the thief with a lop-sided smile before he turned away to make the necessary arrangements with _Mirage._

 

*      *      *

He would not have called it the most advantageous of plans, under any circumstances. The most difficult part had been persuading _Mirage_ to continue screening their presence from outside probes after the deflection shield had been dropped. There were still more contingencies here than Avon might otherwise have liked. Too many unknowns. But this course held the best chance of retrieving Orac, and above all else, he intended to do that. If, in the process, fate dealt him the chance to avenge his recent mistreatment at Vaylan's hands, well, that would be nice too. But Orac must take first priority.

Now, in full view of the orbiting flotilla of rebel ships, they were moving once again toward the scheduled rendezvous with Dastram -- and Par Vaylan.

Avon hadn't expected the ship to be challenged two-thousand spacials from orbit range. The voice coming over the intership circuit was male, youthful, and decidedly unfriendly. It demanded that _Mirage_ prepare for inspection boarding.

Vila cast Avon an aggrieved look from across the communications console. "Vaylan's troops?" he queried softly.

"Covering all the angles," Avon conjectured. "Very thorough."

Vila was unimpressed at the tone of admiration. "And very dangerous," he added dismally. "What do we do now?"

From the storage compartment in the aft section of _Mirage'_ s circular bridge, Avon produced two compact hand weapons, one of which he tossed casually across the deck to Vila. The thief caught it, fumbling with it before righting it in his hands and staring back at Avon in horror. His expression was more eloquent than words, but its foreboding did nothing to dissuade Avon.

"I think," he said, checking to make certain the weapon was charged, "that we should ask _Mirage_ to invite the gentlemen aboard."

Their docking mate was a shuttle of Federation design, though from which of the appropriated spacecraft Avon could not be certain. When the ships were linked, _Mirage_ sent docking confirmation, and they waited on either side of the closed airlock for Vaylan's party to board.

After a full twenty minutes, there was still no sign of life from the attached shuttle.

"Something's wrong," Vila whispered unnecessarily. "They're not coming."

"I can see that."

"Well are we just going to stand here?"

 _"Mirage,"_ Avon snapped. "Reconfirm docking status."

#Shuttle docking is confirmed.#

"Where are the crew?"

#Sensors register two humanoid occupants in forward compartment.#

"They're still aboard?" Vila fidgeted nervously with the gun. "Just sitting there? But why?"

#No data,# Mirage said flatly.

Avon regarded the airlock with narrowed eyes. There was something uncomfortably familiar about this ploy. Vaylan had used it on him the first time he had come aboard _Mirage._

"Reconfirm status with docking vessel and request reply," he told the computer.

After a beat, the feminine voice said, #Fourth confirmation unacknowledged.#

"Come into my parlor..." Vila murmured.

"Quite." With a decisive gesture, Avon tripped the control to open the airlock. The door swung back onto a narrow transfer corridor: on the other end, the shuttle's lock stood invitingly open.

"You're not going over there!" Vila protested sotto voce.

"You have a better suggestion?"

"Yes. Does getting the dignified hell out of here ring any bells?"

Avon answered the years-old echo with a dismissive nod. "Stay here," he said, and moved gun-first into the transfer tube.

The shuttle cockpit was cramped and dark -- and its pilot sat slumped over the controls with a laser wound staining the back of his Federation uniform. Avon stared at the unexpected sight for several moments before moving cautiously forward to check for a pulse; it was faint, thready, not likely to be there at all much longer. But _Mirage_ had said there were two in the crew...

He was half way to the interconnecting door before a voice behind him said, "Drop the gun, Avon."

A woman's voice, though not one that he recognized. For one terrible moment, he'd thought it might be...

"I said drop it," she said again, and he sullenly obeyed the order, turning to face an armed blonde figure clad in Federation black that had emerged from somewhere in the shadows of the darkened cockpit. He had never seen her before, yet her knowledge of his name and the predatory look in her eyes told him the reverse was far from true. A Federation bounty hunter, perhaps. But operating this close to Vaylan's base? And how could she have known he would be aboard this ship?

"We're going back aboard your vessel," she said stiffly. "Tell your friend to put his gun down, and prepare to initiate a new course. Cooperate with me, and I might let the two of you live."

Avon's eyes strayed to the dying pilot, pointedly belying the promise. She noted the look and returned one equally callous in its assessment.

"He'd outlived his usefulness."

Avon met her eyes calmly. "Apparently."

She motioned with the paragun toward the airlock. "Shall we go?"

On _Mirage's_ end of the tubing once again, Vila gave their captor no argument in surrendering his gun. Only after Avon had silently followed her orders and detached the docked shuttle did the thief finally give vent to his curiosity.

"Who are you anyway?" he asked meekly.

The woman with the gun stared at him, her eyes cold. "Section Leader Trienn," she said. "I'm... an old friend of Del Tarrant's. And you're going to take me to him."

"Are we?" Avon queried from the flight console. "What gives you the idea we would know where to look... assuming Tarrant were alive at all?"

"Oh, you know," Trienn said with confidence. "And you'll take me. Or I'll turn both of you over to Vice President Arnak and take this ship on a hunt of my own."

"Vice President..." Vila exchanged incredulous glances with Avon, who quelled the reaction with a look.

"What do you want with Tarrant?" he demanded.

"That's my concern."

"And it is ours if you expect to use this ship," Avon countered neatly. "We have business with Vaylan."

"I'm not interested in your business. Now reset the course and take us out of here."

Avon glared, debating whether to defy her with a simple 'no,' or try some form of bluff first. The latter seemed more prudent.

"We don't know where Tarrant is," he lied.

Trienn strode to the console where Vila's stolen vistapes still lay beside the viewer. Avon saw the thief close his eyes in chagrin as she picked up the tape bearing Tarrant's name, the gun still held firmly in her other hand.

"I think this might be of some small help," she said.

"Oh now look," Vila's tone became suddenly conciliatory. "If you're really a friend of Tarrant's, there's no reason why we couldn't work this out in a nice friendly way, is there? We could work together."

The response was anything but receptive. Trienn's fist tightened over the vistape until the knuckles went white. "I'm going to ask him a question," she said slowly. "And then I'm going to kill him."

 

*      *      *

Madame President had owned three palace residences on Earth, two of them "inherited" from her predecessor. The third, which had been painstakingly reconstructed for her during her first term of office, she had reclaimed from the lesser bureaucrat who had taken possession after the rebel coup that had deposed her in the first place.

Nils Arnak considered that as he relaxed on a terrace of the palace in question and sipped a glass of sherry. She had actually been deposed some time later, now that he thought about it. But no matter; the coup that had taken this residence had been the beginning of the end for her. And even though she had found a way, eventually, to regain her office, he, the lowly once-commissioner, had taken it from her. That was a feat many lesser men had tried and failed to accomplish.

Arnak nestled further into the lounge, the sherry finished, and drank in the evening air. Remarkable, how fresh it seemed after the recycled stuff inside the domes. When he had instated himself as fully acting President, he would have to see about enacting legislation to reclaim more of the planet's natural surface. Not that it would be wise to release the entire population from the domes; too much control would be lost that way. But for a privileged few...

Hands spread over an expansive stomach, he ran mentally over the other currently pressing matters-of-state. Threat of the rebel alliance on Dastram; native uprising on Gurdris; the _Mirage_ affair... Then there was that niggling problem of overexpenditures on supply ships to the outer world prison colonies. Cutting off the ship-runs was only half a solution, really. It left the prison planets officially on the books; left the Federation financially culpable as long as the colonies remained, and he didn't doubt that many would remain, supply ships or no.

Obviously, he would have to do something about that. Something decisive.

Then there was Madame President herself to consider. Even in stasis, she had just about "outlived" her usefulness. Keeping her around much longer could be dangerous; she'd obtained a certain notoriety for her ability to return from the dead, after all, and the damage done to her system by Restal's poison, while irreversible by current medical technology, might not be insurmountable at some point in the future.

So he would have to do something about that too.

But not just now.

The evening breeze was cool and pleasant, the lounge comfortable, and his political position secure, to all appearances. No need to rush things then, was there?

Yawning once, Arnak indulged in an inelegant stretch, and then began to snore softly...

 

*      *      *

Dauban's unrelenting desert sweltered under a lard-colored sky streaked at intervals with iron grey. Those streaks were the harbingers of sunset: to Tarrant they signalled nothing more than the end of yet another wasted day spent digging in the unforthcoming sand.

A fortnight had passed since his altercation with Durk in the cell. The water rations had run out two days ago; six more of their number had died in riots over what little liquid remained in the canned food stores. And through it all, the mutoids stood by, watching, waiting.

They were watching now, ranked like Terran vultures along the prison's mud-brown walls, eyes trained on the pathetic efforts of the latest dig.

Three-hundred yards from the complex proper, Tarrant sat at the edge of the "well" and rested his head on his knees, listening to Kendall and Cameron still laboring in the hole. They were the only ones still out, the rest having abandoned the effort much earlier in the day to return to their cells. But even this group's persistence would be quelled soon, with the loss of sunlight.

Tarrant rubbed absently at the bandaging over his ribs. Healing but still tender, the wound had effectively ended his usefulness in the wells; Kendall had adamantly refused to let him wield a shovel, and so he'd been reduced to hauling up the occasional bucket of sand, and spent the rest of his time standing by and watching.

"I'll be bloody damned..."

The muffled curse had come from Kendall. Tarrant looked up to see him coming over the rim from the rope ladder, the sifting pail slung over one shoulder. Once out of the hole, he dumped the bucket's contents on the ground in front of Tarrant.

"Look't that," he breathed. "Will you bloody look't that!"

Cameron's bushy head popped over the rim then, an inane grin splitting the tangle of curly red beard. "Call that an eleventh hour salvation, I would," he opined.

Tarrant blinked at them in tired confusion, not understanding, and finally brought his gaze to rest on the small mound of sand from Kendall's bucket. It formed a round dark blotch on the dry soil beneath it. Darker than the rest of the sand the well had produced. Darker...

Unbelieving, he reached out to grasp a handful, nearly jumping when his hand came into contact with the loose soil.

It was wet.

"Jus' like a virgin bride," Cameron nattered happily. "All I did was put the 'ol spade in, an' there she flowed..."

He went on, a rambling, euphoric rush, but Tarrant didn't hear the words. He closed a fist over the handful of damp earth, shut his eyes tightly, and...

Something whispered in the skies overhead.

It was a moment before he recognized the sound; it had grown to a throbbing power hum before he was certain, and by that time both Kendall and Cameron had turned their eyes skyward as well.

"What the--?" Tarrant pulled himself to his feet, the wet sand momentarily forgotten, and searched the dimming sky eagerly for the ship. "They can't have changed their minds now. Not after all this time!"

"Why not?" Kendall countered. "And who cares, anyhow? It's a ship!"

They saw it in the same instant: a sliver of gold on the dusky horizon, sun glinting off its tapered hull. Kendall had his arms in the air and was waving like a madman, though the ship was still too far away to see him. It was travelling fast, Tarrant realized, and an abrupt uneasiness seized the pit of his stomach as they watch the glowing ship approach.

"Too fast," he murmured aloud, and grabbed at Kendall's arms to pull them down. "Kendall, that's not a supply ship!"

"Who gives a damn what kind of ship it is?" Cameron answered from the well rim. "We got our luck in today, didn' we? Never thought I'd..."

He stopped, face falling as he recognized the growing shape above them. Tarrant knew the outline all too well. Quasar Class ML7. An armed missile attack craft...

"Get down."

When a confused Kendall made no move to obey, Tarrant caught a shoulder and pushed him, forced to shout now over the growing noise. "Get down! Look for cover!"

But there was none. Kendall fell away from him just as the Quasar roared overhead, a sleek and deadly payload falling with deceptive grace from its launch bay. Tarrant had a fleeting image of the mutoids scattering out from the prison walls, running with what was, for them, uncharacteristic speed. They weren't nearly fast enough.

The adobe building mushroomed into a yellow and crimson inferno. A protracted second later, the ground beneath Tarrant heaved like an ocean wave, buckling with enough force to pick him up and throw him several feet from the well. He'd heard Kendall shout something, a name he didn't recognize. In the same instant had come Cameron's anguished scream as the well had collapsed and buried him. Tarrant had been unaware of his own cry. The ground reared up and slammed into him, and the world spun suddenly away into a warm and peaceful nothing.  
 

It was heat that woke him. That and the gritty trickle of sand crawling inside his coverall. He'd barely regained enough of his senses to discern that he was lying, partially buried, against a dune created by the blast, when he heard muffled voices, and boots grinding on the dry sand. His first impulse was to cry out; he stifled it with the bitter realization that this could not possibly be either Cameron or Kendall. When he forced his eyes open, blinking away grit, he could see Kendall lying face down beside the concave depression that had once been the well. His right fist had a death grip on one of the worn spades.

"Couldn' see payin' their keep from the beginnin' if you ask me," one of the voices announced loudly, and two pairs of legs clad in Federation black moved into Tarrant's limited vision range.

"Mm," the other grunted noncommittally. "Here you are. Looks like they didn' all go to bed early."

They were standing over Kendall, blasters held nonchalantly in their gloved hands. One booted foot dug under the heavy body and callously started to lever it over.

The corpse came to life.

Tarrant saw Kendall's hand come up as the trooper turned him, the shovel swinging in an arc toward the nearest paragun and connecting to send the weapon flying.

Had there not been two of them, it might have succeeded.

Quite calmly, the second man raised his gun and squeezed the trigger; one fluid, practiced motion. The weapon discharged with a _chuff_ and a brief flash of light. Without a sound, Kendall fell back into the sand. The spade landed awkwardly on top of him.

Biting back another cry, Tarrant closed his eyes and turned his face to the ground once again. They hadn't seen him yet, but he had no illusions about the efficiency of Federation death squads...

"He's done for," one of the voices said, and there came the snick of a blaster magazine being checked for proper charge. "Must've been more'n just him though."

"Mm," the other one grunted again. "Over there."

Tarrant kept his eyes shut as the heavy footsteps approached, and struggled not to breathe any more than he had to. Perhaps, if they were both as thick-witted as they seemed...

"Blast got 'em clear up here. Remind me t'tell Raben his range is even better'n he thought it was."

"Mm."

The footsteps halted beside him. For several seconds, there was no sound at all. Then without warning, one booted foot kicked him savagely in the side, hitting the injured ribs and forcing out a strangled gasp of pain.

"Well well," chortled the first voice. "It's breathing."

"Not for long it isn't."

He heard the scuff of the paragun against the sleeve of the leather uniform, then the soft click of the trigger readying as the man took aim...

Two shots sounded, one almost on top of the other. Tarrant had curled tighter around the throbbing ache in his side, expecting the heat of the blast to tear into him; bewildered when it did not. And why had he heard _two_ shots?

Lifting his head from its bed of sand, he saw the two black-clad figures sprawled just beyond him, on top of each other, paraguns still clutched in their hands. Both were unquestionably dead. But who...?

"Get up."

Another voice -- a woman's this time. And another Federation uniform. Section Leader. Had they resorted now to killing each other over who was to finish off the survivors? This really was becoming tiresome.

"I said get up!"

He tried to comply, finding that the soil fell away more easily than he'd thought it would. The injured ribs foiled his effort, however, and he ended up falling against the small dune in a sitting position, gazing up at his rescuer/captor with an expression of weary surrender.

"I'm afraid that's the best I can manage, just for the moment."

She didn't say anything, but her gun was trained on him, in a way that signalled she fully intended to use it. She seemed to be waiting for something. Tarrant wondered what. He couldn't see her face clearly -- she stood against the ugly yellow backdrop of Dauban's sunset -- but something in both the stance and the voice was familiar.

Unable to place them, he leaned back further in the warm mound of sand and looked away to the north, at the blackened ruin of the prison complex still sending clouds of oily smoke skyward. He was surprised when she moved around to face him again, and knelt down to his level with the gun still held ready over her knees.

"You look like hell, Tarrant," she said.

He squinted, able to see her better now, to assess the cool grey eyes and the nearly-shaven hair. Recognition came slowly; there was nothing here of the eager young cadet he had known all those years ago. Known and loved... or so they had both believed at the time. Even the voice had changed. It was hard now. Hard and bitter.

"It _is_ you." The words sounded so utterly inane that he almost laughed. Then with a sobering look at the dead troopers, he added, "This is the first mopping-up operation I've ever seen that included killing your shipmates. Not that I'm inappreciative, mind you..."

Trienn made a short, derisive sound. "I wasn't with them. I came with some old friends of yours. Left them locked in their own ship, over the hill there."

His smile was more of a grimace. "I don't have any 'old friends'."

Her gloved hand flexed once over the gun. "Suit yourself. I was glad to know you weren't dead... yet. I wanted to ask you a question."

Tarrant looked away. "About Joram," he said quietly.

"Yes." The slightest of pauses preceded something that was largely more statement than question. "You killed him, didn't you?"

"That's what the wanted holos said."

She bristled at the flippant response. "I want to hear _you_ say it."

"Why? So you can shoot me? 'Grieved wife kills ex-lover six years after husband's murder'?"

"You bastard." The gun was snatched up to point at him, her finger resting over the trigger. "You're still the same conceited ass you were then."

This time he did laugh, but it was a tired, hollow sound. "Probably," he said without conviction.

"You didn't answer the question. Did you kill him?"

Tarrant tried to look at her, but the barrel of the gun was between them now. "I had to," he said seriously. "I guess you're not likely to believe that."

"You guess correctly. You'd planned the desertion all out, hadn't you? Jump ship at the next port, steal the first available transport and leave space command behind forever. Only Joram got in your way. Tried to talk you out of it, I'd bet. So you repaid him -- by shoving him out an airlock."

Tarrant shook his head. "That's very nicely reasoned, but not quite the way it happened."

She looked up over the gunsight, grey eyes narrowed with suspicion. "What's your version, then?"

"I'm afraid I'm the one who got in _his_ way. He snapped, Trienn. Nobody knew why, but it happens. I caught him setting a charge in the airlock. He was going to commit suicide; take the ship and forty people with him."

She made the derisive noise again. "So instead of talking him out like any reasonable human being, you just pulled the ejection lever."

Tarrant's eyes were far away. "No," he said. "I didn't activate the jettison control. He did. I just didn't stop him."

"Liar." Trienn's response was venomous. "You killed him and then betrayed everything you knew -- deserted! Why else would you run?"

He leaned his head back to stare up at a few dim stars growing visible in the grey and amber sky. "Because they were no more willing to believe me than you are." Without looking at her, he said wearily, "I've answered your questions. So why not just shoot me and have done with it? I've been dead for two years anyway."

She stood up with the gun still pointed, looming over him, blotting out the stars. The weapon had begun to tremble in her hands.

"Damn you," she whispered. _"Damn you!"_ The paragun dropped to her side, held loosely in one shaking hand. "I would have killed you. I still should."

A new voice, quavering and oddly familiar, said, "Why don't you be a nice stormtrooper and put the gun down instead?"

Standing there, materialized out of the shadows, was the ghost of Vila Restal with a gun in his hand. Tarrant blinked at the apparition, certain it would vanish again as unexpectedly as it had appeared.

Trienn merely glared at it. "Who turned _you_ loose?"

"Gremlins," said the ghost of yet another familiar voice. "Now do as he says and drop the gun." Avon -- thinner, older, but definitely Avon -- came out of the shadows on the other side of her. He also held a weapon trained in her direction, and when Trienn gave no indication that she would obey his demand, he moved in, aimed...

"No!" Tarrant found his feet, stepping deliberately into Avon's line of fire. "Don't kill her."

Avon lowered the handgun, a dismayed look on his face. "She came here to kill _you,"_ he seethed.

"But she didn't." Tarrant took the paragun from unresisting hands and tossed it away. It landed with a satisfying crunch beside the dead troopers. "Now I think you have the same choice that I did," he told her. "You can go back to the Federation and face court martial... or you can come with me."

Vila's mild voice protested. "Now wait a minute..."

"I don't much care which ship, as long as it leaves this planet behind it." Tarrant nodded at the uniformed corpses. "We can take theirs. It's fast and well-armed."

"No." That was Avon. "We go together."

Tarrant grinned at the well-remembered obstinate tone. "Take her back to the ship then. I don't think she'll give you any more trouble."

Trienn shot him a smoldering look. "Tarrant..."

"Later," he said. "I'll catch you up."

She hesitated, deciding, then spun and stalked away. Avon followed, the gun still ready at his side. Only Vila lingered, looking as much the curious child as ever, watching him with eyes that were as innocent as they were shrewd.

"You look like hell, Tarrant," he finally said.

"So I've been told." There was no humor in the pilot's response. He walked past the fallen troopers, past Vila, and paused over Kendall's motionless form, still sprawled near the ruined well that served as Cameron's grave.

"Aren't you coming?" Vila queried in a puzzled voice. "We have a ship, Tarrant. Wait till you see..."

"In a moment." Tarrant didn't look at him. His eyes were on Kendall's face, the once-kind features frozen in a death grimace. "Go on ahead, Vila. I'll be there."

When the bewildered thief had gone, Tarrant said to no one in particular, "There's one last thing I have to do."

And stooping, he retrieved the spade.


	4. Chapter 4

Wealth agreed with Arnak. Born to it he may not have been, but the trappings came naturally  
enough to him; the food, the wine, the resplendent clothes. No wonder Madame Servalan had  
fought so hard to regain the Presidency -- only, he clucked to himself smugly, to lose it again.

The former Commissioner and newly self-appointed President lounged in his oversized office  
chair, fingering the expensive silk of his new tunic and ignoring the mounting pile of  
affairs-of-state that littered the desktop. He had a more immediate problem to consider: what to  
do with a beautiful but decidedly dangerous corpse.

Concealed just behind and to his left, a locked room held her remains in cryo. A fitting end for the ice queen, Arnak mused, running a hand over his bald head. Only it wasn't quite an end yet, was it? They said there was no antidote for the poison. But 'they' said many things, and were no more to be trusted than she had been.

She hadn't risen to this high office by trusting -- and neither would he.

Still, disposing of her once and for all was proving more difficult than he'd imagined. He had no idea how to go about it alone, and anyone he recruited for the task was an added risk. There were ways, however. He'd seen to the immediate dispatch of the medical team that had analyzed the poison, and the Delta and Gamma workers who'd installed the cryo unit to begin with. Then, he'd thought he may still need her; a rather grisly but viable insurance. As it had turned out, the story that she'd been lost in the battle at Sekros had proven more expedient -- he had the counterfeit tapes of her orders that he was to act as President in her absence --and now the 'corpse' had become a liability.

Arnak's ruminations were interrupted by the arrival of an aide, a plump young man with a perpetual squint and the tendency to stutter. The President's ample form shifted upward in the chair, rife with annoyance at the intrusion.

"This had better be important, Worl."

"It is. I mean, I'm sorry Comm-- Mister President, but I... he..."

"He?" Arnak growled. "I already told you once, no appointments today. I don't care who it is. Send him away."

Worl looked resolutely miserable. "I tried to, sir, but he... but it's..."

"Councillor Falco is the name. And I told him you _would_ see me." The blond man who had appeared in the doorway was not tall, but his deportment was one of such authority that few would have dared to question him. Worl offered the President a nothing-I-can-do-about-it shrug of the eyebrows before he fled the office.

Falco sent a satisfied smirk after him, and when the door had closed, deliberately tripped the lock.

Unintimidated, Arnak merely leaned back in the chair, evoking a protesting creak from the  
springs.

"And what do you want? I'm a busy man, Falco."

The Councillor's arm, caped in royal blue, gestured to the unattended jumble of paper on the desk. "So I see."

Arnak sniffed, deliberately ignoring the slight. "Well?"

For an uncomfortably long moment, Falco said nothing at all. Too-blue eyes regarded Arnak with such analytical detachment that he felt rather like a steak on a starving man's table, and as though that particular bit of demoralization were not enough, the gaze was promptly chorused by a flash of perfect white teeth.

"I came to offer my congratulations," Falco said.

Arnak blinked, his own confidence rapidly diminishing in the wake of that smile. Something about this man exuded control. More than control. Manipulation.

"Congratulations?" Arnak mustered a feeble smile of his own. "Oh yes. You mean my  
ascension."

"Not precisely." The blue-clad Councillor strolled to the President's desk, cape flaring behind him, and placed two gloved hands at precise angles on its edge. "I was referring to your resignation."

The chair creaked again with Arnak's sudden return to an upright position.

"What?"

"Oh, you heard me correctly." That damned smile again. "The Council has decided  
that you are to resign the Presidency -- forthwith. You can spare us all that tedious  
psychomanipulation by cooperating now, or..." Something in his tone said he would clearly have preferred the 'tedium.' Arnak suppressed a shudder by wrapping it in rage and reached for the  
alarm switch under the desk.

The only thing that answered his summons was a smug twinkle in Falco's pale eyes.

"That won't work, I'm afraid. You see the coup is already over. The High Council is firmly in control of the computer complex, the staff..." He paused, adding with a soft, confident laugh, "...and the Federation."

Arnak opened his mouth, closed it again, then repeated the exercise twice before sputtering, "You can't be serious. You'd have to be mad..."

"No. But I am impatient." With a small but cultivated flourish, Falco produced a primly-folded  
document from his cloak and opened it on the cluttered desk. "It requires your signature. No  
more, no less. A legal formality, but then we are a people of law and order, are we not?"

Arnak entertained the momentary fantasy of knocking those disgustingly flawless teeth out, one at a time. If nothing else, it served to bolster his flagging courage.

"No," he said.

Something clicked. Arnak looked up in time to see the tailored sleeve of the Councillor's tunic  
produce a small but functional laser weapon that slid neatly into the man's gloved palm. Falco  
leaned over the desk, pushing the resignation letter closer with the muzzle of the gun, and uttered a single, cajoling word.

"Please."

Arnak rooted through the mess on the desktop until he came up with a pen, and summarily signed the document. There was no further point in arguing.

Now that it was done, however, Falco looked disappointed.

"Pity," he said as he folded the paper and tucked it away again. "Your predecessor would never have surrendered so easily. I was quite looking forward to unseating her. It was she this coup was designed to depose, you see."

The fact that the gun remained trained on him told Arnak more than he wanted to know about Falco's intentions now that the document he wanted was secure. Still, the man's apparent  
interest in Servalan might be a tool he could use...

"Did you know her?" Arnak asked, appalled at the quaver in his voice. "Servalan, I mean?"

Falco straightened, drawing the gun away with him, though he still held it ready. "Oh yes. Another time, another name. But I knew her. You might also say I owed her something. Repayment, so to speak, for the loss of my livelihood. Not that I haven't done well for myself since, but at the time it was... distressing." His smile this time was a tight-lipped smirk. "A shame it's a debt I shall never be able to pay."

Arnak paused significantly before playing his trump card. "And if I told you that I could arrange it, what then?"

Immediate interest sparkled in the Councillor's eyes. "Oh, you are more clever than we gave  
you credit. Do you mean she's alive?"

"Strictly speaking, yes and no. The point is, I have her."

"Where?"

Arms crossed over a protruding stomach, Arnak smiled in his turn. "Oh, no. I want safe passage to a neutral planet first. Then I'll leave you word where to find her." He raised a hand. "On my honor."

Falco's laughter echoed in the expansive room. "That, I'm afraid, is worth even less than she is." The gun came back to dance under Arnak's nose. "But you've overlooked one small matter. These chambers have been under unauthorized surveillance for a number of months now. Nothing in the official records, of course -- that would rather tend to spoil a take-over bid, don't you think? Now what say we take a look at this private little anteroom of yours, shall we?"

Arnak paled, but obeyed the impatient gesture of the gun and rose to open the cryo chamber door by pressing his palm to the light-panel lock. Falco swept past him into the room, activating the overheads automatically with his entrance, and strode to the tubular unit to stare in undisguised awe at the face beneath the curve of frosted plex.

"Yes and no," he quoted grimly. "Which is it then? Is she dead or alive?"

Arnak shrugged. "She was alive, barely, when she went into cryo. No point in reviving her though. There's no antidote to the poison."

"Poison?" Falco seemed to have forgotten all about the gun. "You poisoned her? She really must have been slipping, to fall for that."

"No, not me. One of Blake's people did it.  The thief, Restal."

Falco's head snapped up at the name. "Oh, now that _is_ poetic justice. From his profile, I'd never have thought it of him." He gazed again at the still form inside the unit, making soft 'tsk' sounds behind pursed lips. "Really, Servalan. Felled by a Delta-grade thief at the height of your return to power? Ignominious, to say the least."

Arnak cast a nervous glance back into the office, tempted but certain that an effort to reach the door would never succeed. By the time he unlocked it...

"There's no point, really." He spun to find Falco pinning him with those unnerving blue eyes. "In running, I mean. Nowhere to go, you see."

Arnak eyed the gun, hanging loosely now at the Councillor's side, and rubbed absently at the headache that had begun pounding in his temples. "What are you going to do?"

"With this?" Falco brought the weapon up, then, unexpectedly, tossed it away to clatter noisily against the chamber wall, making Arnak flinch visibly. "Nothing. I'm afraid it was never charged. Messy things, guns. I've always despised them."

"But..." Arnak didn't know whether to be relieved or furious. "What...?"

"There are... shall we say, subtler means." Falco patted the pocket containing the signed  
document, and with sudden sick realization, Arnak understood the reason for the headache -- and the gloves Falco wore. Chemically treated paper; fatal within minutes. His stomach rebelled at  
the thought, and he stumbled back out the chamber door to be violently ill beside the President's  
desk. The last thing he heard was Falco's deceptively pleasant voice addressing the cryo-unit's  
occupant.

"I must tell you this," it purred. "You are still the sexiest officer I have ever known..."

 

*      *      *

Vila Restal had already begun to wonder if rescuing Tarrant from that prison planet had been such a great idea after all. Not that he'd suggested it -- exactly. But leave it to an Alpha grade space pilot to move in and take over every time. _Mirage_ was already responding to him in ways that _Scorpio,_ or even _Liberator,_ never had. For two days, he'd been the proverbial child with a new toy, barely aware of his shipmates and inclined to short answers when he responded to them at all.

The flight deck was quiet just now, except for the continual hum pulsing behind the cobalt blue plex of the computer's main housing. As had been the case ever since Tarrant's return, Avon was nowhere in evidence, and the only other presence on deck, equally quiet, was Trienn, whom Vila had even less reason to trust, particularly since she still wore her Federation uniform.

An 'old friend' of Tarrant's, she'd said she was. So she'd hijacked _Mirage_ \-- and Vila and Avon with it -- in order to find the pilot and kill him. Well she'd found him all right, only she hadn't killed him, and now Tarrant had dragged her along and... just what was it with Tarrant and old girlfriends anyhow?

It had been Vila's sad experience that 'old friends' of either gender tended to be dangerous -- particularly with regard to Avon and Tarrant. Trienn gave Vila no less reason to feel uncomfortable; she still looked at the pilot with a glimmer of murder in her eye.

"Vila?"

The thief jumped, aware for the first time that someone was standing over him, and had placed a hand on his shoulder. Tarrant. Once, it would have been a terse command and a rough shove to rouse him awake, but this voice, unlike the Tarrant he remembered, was far more concerned than demanding.

"Are you all right?"

Vila pulled himself straighter in the chair, shrugging off the pilot's hand. "All right? Of course I'm all right, why wouldn't I be all right? And don't do that, would you? I'm getting too old for surprises!"

Tarrant's smile had lost all of its one-time arrogance. "Sorry," he said, and Vila was sure he meant it. "I only asked if you'd seen Avon lately. I can't seem to raise him."

Vila had been dreading that question. He knew well enough where Avon would be. But he had no particular desire to tell Tarrant -- or this stranger -- about it. "Resting," he said rather lamely  
instead. "He's been... tired... lately."

"Not in his cabin," Tarrant said. "Unless he's just not answering the comm?" He studied Vila's closed expression for a moment, then added, "Perhaps I should take a look..."

"No." The word came out sounding sharper than Vila had intended.  "That is, you don't have to. Or maybe what I really mean is, I wouldn't, if I were you."

The old Tarrant, he knew, would have taken that as a dare. This one merely looked at him and  
seemed, somehow, to understand. At least, he nodded knowingly as though he did, and said, "All right. You tell me then. Why are we on course for this Dastram, whatever it is, and why is  
_Mirage_ sending pulse signals to someone named Vaylan?"

Vila cast an uneasy glance at Trienn. "We were on Dastram looking for Vaylan a week ago, before we were... er... sidetracked by your friend over there."

"Looking for him for what?" Tarrant had ignored the reference to Trienn entirely. "And why a pre-programmed pulse code? What's this ship to him?"

"His," Vila said simply. "Or it was. That is, he stole it from someone in the Tragal System before the Federation could steal it instead and then we stole it from him and... it's all a bit complicated, really. But what he did get away with was Orac -- and Avon wants Orac. No matter what."

Tarrant took a moment to absorb that. "Yes, well, if that's the case, why warn him you're  
coming? Why send a signal?"

"Because Vaylan thinks Avon is dead -- he had him executed for Blake's murder, only I didn't let him -- I told you it was complicated. Anyway this ship was programmed to go looking for Vaylan. He won't be expecting a crew."

"But you said he had Orac. Surely he'll know..."

"He does have Orac." Vila fished something out of a pocket and plunked it into Tarrant's hand. "But he can't _use_ Orac. I saw to that."

Tarrant stared down at the small plex rectangle that housed Orac's activation mechanism and began to laugh. "Vila, you haven't changed at all."

"Hmph. Lucky for you lot. You should be thankful spaceships aren't the only thing I can steal, let me tell you. If it hadn't been for me..."

"I get the picture, Vila," the pilot interrupted gently. "And believe me, I'm thankful."

Vila didn't know quite how to take that; humility was not a trait he was accustomed to in Tarrant. There weren't all that many people whose personalities he could say had been improved by prison life. But in this case...

"Are you going to tell me what's wrong with Avon? Or do I have to risk life and limb by asking  
him myself?"

The mere thought of that made Vila wince. Life and limb might be the least of it.

Again, the thief's eyes fell on Trienn, and he wondered what she was waiting for, sitting there like a uniformed statue, grey eyes trained on nothing at all. She hadn't spoken a word since Tarrant had brought her aboard, and Vila was as much in the dark as before about why she'd wanted to kill the pilot. He'd stopped her from shooting Tarrant on Dauban, but by the time he'd got the drop on her, whatever she'd had to say had already come and gone.

"Vila?"

"Eh? Oh, sorry. What did you say?"

"You're not going to tell me."

Vila sobered abruptly, rubbing at his eyes in dimly-realized imitation of a gesture that had once been Blake's. "Can't say as I can, really. But for once in your life, Tarrant, take some advice. Don't ask him."

A little of the old Tarrant surfaced in the pilot's affronted response. "Why not?"

Vila got wearily to his feet. "Because if anyone's going to," he said, "it ought to be me."

Tarrant's rejoinder died aborning when _Mirage's_ prim tones announced the need for a manual course correction, calling him back to the pilot's console. Trienn's hollow eyes tracked him, and focused on his hands as they adjusted the controls.

Fast ships and old girlfriends. Leave it to Tarrant.

Vila shrugged inwardly, and took his own leave.

 

*      *      *

_You should be careful of revenge, Avon_. The voice was deep, resonant, in every respect Blake's. _It has a way of coming back on you._

An air of petulance lingered in the tone, as it always had in those first days off the _London._ And Avon answered much as he might have answered then. "You always were a fool," he said.

 _Perhaps_.

That annoying little smile of Blake's dripped from the single word. You didn't have to see it to know that it was there. Avon lifted a hand to the cold syntheglass of the observation window, fingers splayed as though to touch the mute stars beyond.

"I will kill Vaylan." He spoke the words with complete, unfeeling calm, as though the act would mean no more to him than casting off an old pair of boots. Except that it did mean more. So much more. The idealist -- the humanitarian in Blake would never understand what it meant to wreak vengeance on an enemy; to repay one who had tried to murder you in kind. Though murder was possibly an inappropriate word.

Vaylan had tried to execute him... for _Blake's_ murder. And the irony of that brought a grimacing  
smile to Avon's lips. Perhaps Blake understood what it meant after all.

 _An eye for an eye?_ the voice chided, and Avon recognized the reference from one of Blake's favorite banned texts.

"You, I suppose, would merely have turned the other cheek?" There was nothing like matching  
obscure quotation for still-more-obscure quotation.

 _You..._ Blake emphasized the word, _might benefit a great deal more from using his movement, and Vaylan -- alive. Or hadn't that occurred to you?_

"I will have Orac," Avon grated, addressing his own reflection in the glass. "The teleport, and our survival, depends upon that."

 _And then?_ Blake's tones queried gently.

"And then we will call on the Federation's erstwhile President -- on Vila's behalf, to check on the efficacy of a certain... gift... he left for Servalan."

"No need to bother on my account." If the sight of Vila propped against the doorframe, openly eavesdropping, might once have infuriated him, Avon refused to be baited by it now. Whatever the thief had overheard, he would have to draw his own conclusions.

Avon turned disdainful eyes on him and said, "You're not in the least bit curious, I take it."

"About whether she's dead you mean?" Vila shrugged. "Not really. There's been nothing in the viscasts about it though, has there?"

"I haven't had much time to look. But then, the chances are there wouldn't be. Without Orac..."

Blake's warning cut across his thought, blade-sharp, and effectively severed the words. _Take care, Avon,_ it admonished. _Some of the dead are still among the living._

"Avon?"

He brought his head up to meet Vila's eyes, full of guileless concern and a more familiar worry, whether for himself or Avon's state of mind -- or both-- it was impossible to tell.

"What is it, Vila?"

The simple question seemed to rattle the other man, who cast a nervous glance over his shoulder back toward the flight deck. "Nothing really, I just..." He stopped, abandoning one tactic for another in true rabbit-minded Vila fashion. "Tarrant's been looking for you," he finally blurted. Then as though to soften the blow of that startling revelation, he added, "I said I'd try to find you instead. Didn't think you'd mind, not as much as Tarrant looking anyhow, and I sort of figured... well that is I knew you... I, uh, had an idea you'd be here." The last phrase tumbled out in a rush, delivered like a small child confessing a transgression. "Avon..."

"Yes?" That one sibilant word drove Vila further into the unyielding metal of the doorframe.

"You shouldn't..." The thief straightened then, visibly drawing his courage around him. Trembling hands dusted the sides of his tunic. "You hadn't ought to let Tarrant hear you, is all," he said without looking up. "He might think... Well he might think, period, and you know that's dangerous for him."

Avon's answer came without rancor. "I'll bear that in mind."

Vila met his eyes again, clearly lost for anything to add. "Oh," he said meekly. "Fine then. I'll just tell Tarrant you'll meet him on the flight deck in a while, shall I?"

"You do that."

Without further comment, Vila fled the doorway. Avon turned back to the black expanse of the stars and pressed his hand once again to the window. The fingers contracted, spread, contracted again, leaving faint spider patterns on the glass.

"The dead, Blake," he said aloud, "are _always_ with the living."

 

*      *      *

Restal would die for this.

She would see to it personally.

It had been her last conscious thought and now, waking, became her first. The President of the Terran Federation could under no circumstances allow a menial -- and one supposedly modified at that -- to humiliate her as Restal had done. No. For that he would pay. Dearly. And Arnak...

Where was Arnak? She remembered well enough his bloated smirk as the deadly gas had risen from Restal's trap and engulfed her. Arnak must be made to pay as well. She had tolerated him more than long enough.

Servalan opened her eyes to a near-total darkness. Faint light from somewhere outlined unadorned, flat walls rising on four sides quite close to the hard, unfamiliar surface on which she lay. Scarcely the President's bed chamber. Not her medical section either. And why was it so damnably cold in here?

Her left hand reached for the edge of the table, or whatever it was, and incredibly, she found the movement difficult, the effort expended on forcing the fingers to contract far greater than it should be.

Cold. It was so cold.

Her cramped fingers closed awkwardly over the table's sharp edge, and immediately delivered the message that something else was not right: bare metal should maintain the temperature of its surroundings, and this... this metal was warm to the touch.

Her fingers explored beneath the edge and down the supporting struts as far as she could reach,  
with the same result.

So, it was not the room that had lost adequate heat...

Cryogenic freeze. That would explain it, of course. Restal's little mixture had done sufficient damage to require life suspension. But... There was no plex dome above her, no hum of monitoring equipment, no physician. And a patient recuperating from cryo would have no such lingering effects. Or so she had been told. Damn them. What was the meaning of this outrage? Why weren't they here, her advisors and councillors, security guards and servants? Someone ought to be here. There was absolutely no excuse for this affrontery. No excuse at all.

Fury drove her to sit up on the table, aware for the first time that she was clad in something thin and sleeveless that molded itself to her rather like damp gauze, a sensation at once both clammy and oddly sensual. Not her preferred attire, certainly. Someone would pay for this very dearly indeed.

Her feet found the floor. Bare, cold feet. Warm floor. That contradiction still made no sense,  
but no matter; she would fathom it out later, when she'd found someone to explain this and then  
had the cretin executed for not being here to explain it when she'd first awakened. Everything in  
its proper time and place.

_Door. Find the door. And a light, damn it. There has to be a light control somewhere..._

The flat hum of an automatic door from the other side of the room made her turn back toward the table. A figure waited in the newly opened passageway, indistinct and limned in pale yellow light from behind. A man, by the outline, and from the way he moved when he came forward, apparently a menial.

"You." She infused the word with all the imperious authority she could summon. "I want an explanation for this, and I want it now."

Her visitor said nothing, did nothing. Having shuffled a few feet into the tiny room, he merely stood there as though waiting for some outside source to give him further commands. Drugged, she realized in disgust. What were they playing at, sending her a menial so overdosed on suppressants he could not even answer a simple question? Fools.

Servalan circled the table in one fluid movement, brushed past the stolid menial and headed for the door. In clear anticipation of her intent, it whisked shut just seconds before she would have reached it, plunging the room back into nebulous grey. The long nails of both hands bit into her palms and she stifled a curse, aware that someone would be listening and unwilling to grant them any satisfaction in this peculiar little game until she had determined what the rules might be. Were they watching as well? Even in this near-lightless murk? Why keep it so dark, when surely surveillance would be easier under normal lighting conditions? And why send this mindless moron to her at all? It made no sense. No sense whatsoever.

The shiver that ran through her came as much from admitted fear as from the still-unexplained cold. Someone, obviously, was enjoying all of this. Surely not Arnak -- he lacked the intelligence to devise something even this unnervingly simple. But then, the list of enemies, ergo possible suspects, was far too long to single any one name from its legion.

The harsh rasp of breathing in the otherwise soundless room took her attention back to the menial, still rooted to the floor where he had entered, still waiting. For what? She drifted toward him, circling, uncertain why his presence suddenly...  attracted... her. Her fingers closed over strong, loosely-clad shoulders, lingered, then traced twin paths down arms taut with muscles, straying upward again over a flat stomach and broad chest, exploring the face last of all. A young face, as well-toned as the rest of him; smooth planes angling up into soft, close-cropped hair. He reacted not at all to her attentions, but there was something... a warmth that radiated from him, and it fed the cold in her, drew her into itself as a bottle conformed liquid to its shape. Taking unrestrained pleasure from the sensation, she molded herself to him, caressed the fine hair and the hollowed throat, then covered the firm mouth with her own and took more of the warmth into herself.

She felt him move then, the tiniest spasm of response as though to repel the kiss. But he did not,  
could not. Warmth, breath, life had begun to fill her, flowing in to banish the last of the chill into welcome oblivion, and she abandoned herself to the sweetness of it, to the utterly sensual  
fulfillment of need and desire and hunger. All that she required, it seemed, was here and hers for the taking.

As had always been her habit, Servalan took.

Sleep, or something akin to it, had overtaken her at an unknown point between satisfaction and surfeit. She awoke on the floor, warm and alive, beside a man who was neither. There was light to see him now, though not a lot of it, and she found him not at all handsome in better illumination. He was, however, unquestionably dead, a matter that bothered her rather less than how he'd come to be that way, and only then because she'd harbored no such intention and could recall no one else having entered the room. Whatever madman had devised this...

Her head snapped up to the sound of a hand clap; it was followed in languid succession by two more, delivered in grinning mockery by a man in blue and grey who leaned against the closed door as though he'd been there for some time, watching and waiting.

"Oh that was really most impressive," a soft voice crooned, and Servalan came to unsteady feet with the certainty that she had heard those lilting tones before. "We'll simply have to repeat the experiment with an unpacified specimen next time. I don't doubt you would enjoy that."

She had to place one hand against the table to bring herself upright -- now the metal did feel cold -- but she managed to collect both her authority and her wits and meet the smirking blue eyes straight on.

"Carnell." On her lips, the name was an odd blend of contempt and admiration.

"At your service, Madame President." He chuckled. "Oh, but that isn't quite right, is it? It's really rather the other way round, I'm afraid... on both counts. You are in my service, and as of today, you have the honor of addressing the newly elected-by-council-mandate _President_ Falco. At one time known as the brilliant, if discredited, psychostrategist Carnell. We have both been most eager to see you in action again. I must say, we weren't at all disappointed."

President Falco, was it? Well at least now she knew who the adversary in question was. And the revelation, if not quite pleasing, was not precisely a disappointment either. Carnell had always been... diverting.

"Where is Nils Arnak?" she demanded. "And Restal." A dozen more questions awaited answers, but she would deal with first things first. "I want them both brought here to me."

"Tsk tsk tsk." Carnell shook his head. "You really haven't been listening have you? Restal did a better job than even I suspected possible."

"What are you prattling about?! My... your physicians have undoubtedly administered an antidote. The assassination attempt has failed."

"Not entirely." Carnell strolled toward her, and with no more regard than he might have had for a curled bit of rug, toed the corpse on the floor. "I should have thought this would precipitate your first question, but then I should have known better. Waking up beside a dead lover is hardly new to you, after all."

Though he intercepted with ease the blow she had aimed for his cheek, the look in her eyes was, she hoped, still enough to singe. The blond man's only response, however, was to loose her hand and turn away.

"All right," she conceded. "Suppose I indulge you to explain this little game you've so enjoyed. And with that out of the way, we can get down to business."

Her seductive smile had no overt effect; the former psychostrategist merely gazed at her coolly from the doorway, then withdrew something small and rectangular from an inner pocket of his cape.

"Restal's effort didn't entirely fail, I'm afraid." The lid of the small box he held snapped back to  
reveal twin compartments, one cradling a vial of milky fluid, the other a syringe. "And this, I'm  
not entirely sorry to say, is not an antidote. It merely prolongs the inevitable, as it were. The  
dosage will increase daily, but eventually, of course..." He snapped the lid shut. "I should tell you that the formula is known only to me, and I, naturally, will control the supply."

Servalan accepted his gloating explanation without comment. She glanced down at the menial's stiff form and then, with deliberate calm, back to Carnell. She waited.

"Ah yes." Carnell tucked the syringe container away and made clucking sounds again in the back of his throat. "There were a few... minor surgical modifications... necessary in order to expedite your revival. The side effects are a trifle unpleasant, but as you have just ably demonstrated, well within your ability to handle. Some things never change."

She glared at him, waiting out yet another protracted silence. She had no doubt that there was yet another shoe to drop; Carnell would not be standing here still wearing that priggish grin if there were not.

He sobered abruptly, brushing an imaginary speck of lint from his sleeve, and cleared his throat. "Now, as to my terms..."

So, here it was at last. Servalan lounged against the table and in her finest beguiling purr, said, "There's something you want."

Carnell feigned surprise. "I would dearly love to tell you that I'd gone to all this trouble just to gaze again upon your lovely face, but..."

She forced back an urge to demand that he come to the point. This endless toying had been engineered to irritate her, and damned if she would let him know it had succeeded. Like many an enemy before him, like all men and the fools they invariably were, Carnell would enjoy this sordid wallowing in his new-found power over her -- but only until she found a way, as she had with all the others, to kill him, too.

"It seems I've inherited a small but irksome galactic rebellion," Carnell said lightly. "Something  
tangential to the one led by that Blake fellow you were so keen after. This one's led by a deviant named Vaylan -- I do believe it was one of his strongholds on Sekros you'd just suppressed when this little misfortune befell you? What you may not have known was that he escaped the planet -- and he took Orac with him."

Servalan made a prolonged study of her index finger, curling and uncurling it in lazy arcs. "And you want Orac," she said at last.

"No one man -- or woman -- will ever successfully cement the Federation without it. And your... particular... talents, by fortunate happenstance, are now perfectly suited to helping me retrieve it. Fortuitous, wouldn't you agree?"

The index finger flexed outward, stretching with its fellows toward him. "And what do I get?"

A flash of white teeth preceded the reply. "My word that our search for an antidote will be ongoing, a continuing supply of the prolongation serum... and a chance at Restal. You did say you wanted Restal?"

"And Arnak?"

"Met with an unfortunate accident the other day, poor chap. If I'd known he had any bargaining potential, I might have saved him for you. But really, I think my offer's more than generous as it is. Don't you?"

She retracted the outstretched fingers, bringing them dramatically to rest just over the low-cut cleavage of her gown. No man had ever overpowered her for long, but Carnell was admittedly cleverer than most. It would be interesting to see how this one played the game. "Oh yes," she told him in falsely subdued tones. "More than generous."

She sealed the bargain with a prim smile.

 

*      *      *

"I don't suppose you could find something else to wear?"

Del Tarrant had begun to lose patience with his silent companion on _Mirage'_ s flight deck. Trienn looked up from her morose study of the floor, seeming to notice him for the first time, and scowled.

"I doubt if yours would fit," she grated. "Prison grey's not my color, anyhow."

Tarrant glanced from the too-familiar black of her loose-fitting uniform to his own rather threadbare tunic. When this escapade of Avon's was over, they would definitely have to raid a clothing supply somewhere.

"Well at least I know you can still talk," he said. "I was beginning to think I'd gone deaf."

She looked away again, and another awkward silence stretched between them until almost inaudibly, she said, "Tell me how he died."

Taken aback by the request, Tarrant felt a surge of resentment irrationally tinged with jealousy. It didn't make sense, did it, to be jealous of a dead man? Particularly not when the dead man's wife accused you of his murder and had just tried to kill you.

Sullenly, he replied, "I already told you."

"Then tell me again." The demand was a drill team bark, officious and cutting.

Unintimidated, Tarrant merely shook his head. "There's nothing else to tell. Joram hit the ejection lever himself; he and the bomb he'd planned to destroy the troopship with took a short hike into deep space. I wish I could tell you I was sorry, but at the time..."

The echoing chime of an alarm sliced across his speech. _Mirage's_ dull feminine tones announced, #Ships approaching on epsilon and tau vectors. Hostile intent is apparent.#

Cursing, Tarrant swung back to the pilot's console. "Put them on screen!"

Four moving wedges of light materialized on _Mirage's_ forward bulkhead. Simultaneously, the computer stated calmly, #No response on communications frequencies. Automatic defense program has been initiated.#

Tarrant had no idea what it meant by that, but there was no time to ask. Hands flying over the barely-familiar controls, he mapped out an escape route and three alternates, marginally aware that Trienn had melted into the seat beside him and quietly armed the ship's laser weaponry.

"Who are they?" she asked, and before Tarrant could answer, Vila and Avon arrived on deck, both asking the identical question.

"Not Federation ships," Tarrant said, cutting the alarm. "Out here, pirates most likely. Dastram is more or less in their neighborhood."

Avon swung to face the computer housing. _"Mirage_ \-- are we capable of repelling an attack by  
four of these vessels?"

#Defense program activated and running.#

"Whatever that means!"  Vila moaned.

"I think we're about to find out." Tarrant nodded at the screen, where one of the four ships had begun an unmistakable attack run. "Better strap down and hang on."

While Avon and Vila hastily complied, Trienn checked a column of amber telltales and reported, "We have full shields and weapons charge. And something called a refractory, also at full power."

Tarrant caught the ghost of a smile on Avon's face, but turned his attention back to his own  
console. "Evasion pattern one, stand by."

The approaching ship fired a triple laser burst. Crimson light splayed out toward them. Tarrant shouted, "Activate!" and tripped three controls in rapid succession as their defense shields absorbed the blast and _Mirage_ shuddered under the impact. The stars tilted crazily, the only indication of motion, but when they had stopped spinning, their restabilized image included the intrusion of two of the wedge ships.

Trienn shot Tarrant a jaundiced look. "I think they knew that one," she said.

Avon's warning came in two clipped words. "They're closing."

"Get ready to return fire." Tarrant recalibrated his board, keeping one eye on the screen all the while. "Pattern three, stand by."

"Shields," Trienn interjected, "96 percent."

Tarrant nodded. The red beams came at them from two sides now, but he stayed put, instinctively clutching at the console's edge when the deck shook beneath him.

"Shield absorption nine-zero-two," Trienn said crisply. "92 percent power."

Tarrant applied the thrusters to turn _Mirage_ back toward her attackers. The four ships were maneuvering into a new -- and familiar -- attack pattern. In his brief career as a mercenary, he had often seen freetraders use it in running freighters to ground.

"Target starboard ships A and B, simultaneous bursts," he ordered. "We know what we can take. Let's see what we can give."

"Ready," Trienn confirmed.

"Fire."

Tight beams of golden light struck both moving targets amidships. Shields absorbing the energy with ease, both rolled and gracefully arced away, clearing a path for their fellows to attack in turn.

"Escape pattern three," Tarrant told the computer. "Execute, now."

Again, the stars performed an acrobatic inversion, and Vila paled and squeezed his eyes shut. Tarrant's smile at that faded promptly when _Mirage_ levelled out to face three of the four pirate vessels.

Vila opened his eyes, took one look at the screen and groaned. "They knew that one, too."

While the three ships began a new attack run in tandem, _Mirage_ stated coolly, #Refractory defense mechanism awaiting vocal authorization.#

Tarrant stared at the blue plex housing in confusion. "What?"

"It wants permission--" Trienn started to say.

"Permission granted," Tarrant interrupted. "Whatever the hell it is, do it! And ready evasion pattern two while you're at it."

Three sets of triple red beams streaked toward them. _Mirage_ rocked more violently as the shields began to weaken, and their adversaries, now joined by the fourth ship, circled to come in for yet another bombardment. Tarrant had been about to try returning fire yet again when _Mirage_ said, #Refractory shields activating. Tactical display on subscreen two.#

A brief, piercing power whine climbed up the scale and vanished into ultrasonics as _Mirage'_ s tacticals appeared below the image of the closing ships. Their own outline showed blue; the four pirates bright green. But as the power hum finished its crescendo, _Mirage's_ blue silhouette fluttered and promptly dissolved. On the screen above, the four attacking ships suddenly broke formation, veered off, and reconvened, in obvious confusion, a few spacials away.

Tarrant flipped over one last toggle. "Execute pattern two," he ordered, and when the stars  
had completed their circuit and settled, for once, on empty space, he turned to address the  
computer directly. "And just what in the seven hells did you do?"

"Who the hell cares?" Vila put in beseechingly. "Can we just get out of here now -- please?"

Perhaps because Tarrant had failed to preface his question with its name, the computer feigned unawareness that it had been addressed, and merely pulsed blue light, waiting. Avon had risen to stride toward the screen, where a lone ship could now be seen drifting perpendicular to _Mirage's_ course, part of an apparent search pattern.

"They've lost us," Tarrant marvelled aloud. "How is that possible? In the midst of a battle, just when they had us cold... It's as though we'd just... disappeared."

"Yes," Avon said unhelpfully. "Just as though."

"It's that widget you showed me inside the computer panel, isn't it?" Vila deduced with a touch of pride. "That refractorary whatchamacallit... you said it could cause invisibility."

"Rather a fascinating device," Avon said, musing at the wandering ships on the screen. "It should be interesting to further explore its possibilities."

"And what device is that?" Tarrant didn't try to hide his annoyance. One thing the years had not changed was Avon's tendency to be insufferably smug.

"Theoretical molecular particle refraction," the computer tech replied, making Vila's brows knit together. "Except that apparently, it is no longer theoretical."

"That theory applied to electronic sensor-deception," Trienn said. "These ships were well within visual range."

Avon folded his arms in answer and gazed at the perplexed quartet of ships fruitlessly reconnoitering the sector of space beyond them.

"Sensor _and_ visual camouflage." Tarrant was impressed. "I really have underestimated you all these years, Vila. Just what kind of ship is it you've stolen?"

He had the distinct feeling that Vila's grin came from more than simple appreciation of the compliment.

"Appropriated," the thief corrected, exchanging a decidedly cagey look with Avon. "And you've  
learned as much about her as we've done, up to now."

#Secondary stage prepared for activation,# _Mirage_ volunteered, startling all of them.

It was Tarrant who broke the bewildered silence. "And what secondary stage is that, _Mirage?"_

He could have sworn the voice simulator sighed before responding. He must be getting tired. #Deception programming is on line,# she said, a bit less flatly than before, or was he imagining that, too? #Options are available on subscreen three.#

"Curiouser and curiouser," Tarrant quoted. "All right. Show us the options."

Another rectangle below the primary screen lit up with the numbered representations of a dozen ships arranged in three vertical columns. #Options set one of twenty-five,# _Mirage_ said, and abruptly, the twelve outlines were replaced with twelve more.

#Options set two.#

"Hold there." Tarrant was on his feet, moving to join a fascinated Avon in front of the screen. "Is it saying what I think it's saying?" he asked of no one in particular.

"Probably." Avon poised an index finger, brought it down beside the image of an 800 kiloton  
battle cruiser, and said whimsically, "Try asking it for that one."

 _"Mirage,"_ Tarrant said, not at all certain he was ready to believe this, "option thirteen VR-C7. The Maxillian battle cruiser."

Now there was no mistaking the cant in the computer's voice. #Option thirteen,# it breathed with definite inflection. #Program running.#

The power hum began anew, rising steadily.

"Reactivate tactical," Avon requested.

The voice that responded was suddenly flat and mechanical once more. #Tactical on subscreen two.#

Avon's eyes widened at the mercurial change in the computer's vocal circuitry, but he turned his attention, as the power usage whine peaked and dissipated, to the tactical readout, where _Mirage's_ original form reappeared and shimmered briefly before reassembling into the tenfold image of the leviathan battleship.

The effect on their erstwhile hijackers was both immediate and satisfying. After an extremely brief period undoubtedly spent confirming that neither sensors nor eyes were deceiving them, all four pirate vessels turned a judicious tail and ran.

Laughter echoed in their wake on _Mirage's_ flight deck.

"If I hadn't just seen it," Vila wondered, "I'd never have believed it. _Mirage,_ do you really have twenty-five more like that??"

Toneless as before, the computer replied, #Current memory contains 300 options.#

"And what's the capacity for expansion?" Tarrant wanted to know.

The once-flat voice came to life in response to his own. #Our memory banks,# it recited cheerfully, #are expandable to a power of ten.#

Even Avon seemed impressed by that, but Tarrant had the uncomfortable feeling that everyone was looking at him for another reason altogether.

Vila wore a familiar and unmistakably lecherous grin. "I do believe she likes you, Tarrant."

Once, he would have responded with a curt 'Shut up, Vila,' but all he did now was to retake the pilot's seat and deprogram the board. _"Mirage,_ deactivate deception circuit and prepare to resume course."

With all the dripping emotion of a vidscreen siren, the computer replied, #Deactivated and ready...Tarrant.#

Trying valiantly to ignore the titters that answer had evoked from both Vila and Trienn, Tarrant stifled his own grin and set to work reinstating their course for Dastram.

He'd dealt with a number of doting females in his lifetime, but this one was a new twist if ever he'd heard one. He'd have to see about getting the thing reprogrammed.

Then again, after suffering an entire year with Slave insistently calling Avon 'master,' _Mirage_ may just prove to be a somewhat refreshing change...

 

*      *      *

"Oh, come now Dynus. Surely you're not afraid of Falco."

The cajoling voice accompanying the monitor image made Carnell's eyes glitter. Not even cryo-sleep and modification had changed her. Servalan remained as unswervingly devious, as beautiful -- and as deadly -- as ever she'd been.

"I'm not asking you to disobey orders... precisely." The hapless crewman Dynus, assigned to deliver meals to her cabin, merely nodded uncomfortably at her assurance and managed a meager smile as she went on. "I'm simply looking for the answers to a few questions. Surely you know how many shuttles this ship carries?"

Carnell suppressed the urge to laugh aloud, though he was alone in the President's cabin. Scarcely one day out and already she was plotting to escape him. Never one for the fine art of gratitude, was Servalan.

Dynus' young voice came over the monitor's speaker, thready and nervous. "We carry two shuttles... ma'am." He'd backed steadily away from her advances until he stood with his back pressed firmly to the inner bulkhead: efficiently trapped prey, he was, with the spider between him and the only exit.

"And Restal..." She stroked his face with one long, slender finger. "What else has Falco said about him?"

Dynus' eyes were closed, his lips trembling. "Restal?"

"Falco knows where he is." She pressed herself closer. "I want to know, too."

He swallowed. Then, in a rush of words: "We're heading for Dastram to recover something called Orac. That's all I really know -- it's all anyone knows."

She kissed him, and Dynus' stiff back melted a little against the wall.

"Oh but you've heard more, haven't you?" she said into his ear. "Tell me what you've heard."

Trembling, Dynus reached to embrace her, only to be rewarded with her coy withdrawal. She hovered a few feet away, patiently alluring.

"Well?"

"I... I think he said something once about a man by that name. Some ship that was stolen from Sekros."

_"Mirage."_

"Yes, that was it. Restal is supposed to have it."

"And Falco thinks Restal is here, on Dastram?"

"He... never mentioned..."

"It could make sense. Coward or no, he might well want to take Orac back from Vaylan. I must  
know if he is there, Dynus."

"But how...?"

"You will find out for me." She waltzed away, confident now in her complete control. "And there is one other matter."

His eyes, filled with fear and ardor both at once, wordlessly entreated the rest of the command.

"Concealed somewhere in his cabin, Falco has a surgeon's kit containing a syringe, and a supply of a particular drug. You will obtain that for me as well."

At Dynus' timid nod, Carnell snapped off the monitor and sat back in his chair, hands folded with forefingers extended and drumming against each other. He had adequately covered all the probable contingencies, including the variable of her present... condition. Yet with Servalan, one could never be entirely certain of a given outcome. The woman was unique, and creatively treacherous, a challenge even to the most adept psychostrategist. And he admired her tremendously.

His musings were interrupted, at length, by a soft knock at the cabin door. When it had opened at his bidding, Dynus sidled into the room to stand sloppily at attention. His eyes were still hazy with the lingering effects of her kiss.

"Sir," he said dully.

"Better than I thought," Carnell replied without preamble. "But commit the error of underestimating her, and it will be your last. She will keep you alive only so long as there is something to gain."

"Something in particular, Mr. President, being Restal?"

"Exactly."

"Is he really on Dastram, sir?"

"Four raiders from the neighboring system had a run-in yesterday with something matching _Mirage's_ description. Its course trajectory was for Dastram. So we may conclude that in all probability, Restal is still with the ship and still looking for Orac. You will proceed with our passenger as instructed. And when you steal the shuttle, Dynus, make it look convincing?"

"Yes sir."

Carnell's forefingers twined around each other as he regarded the other man clinically. "You're a passable actor, Crewman Dynus. Perhaps you've missed your vocation."

Dynus flushed. "With your permission sir, it... wasn't all an act, precisely. For a moment there, I think I would have told her anything. Anything at all." He cleared his throat, adding belatedly, "Sir."

The President tilted his head and grinned. "Exhilarating, isn't she?" The humor faded almost as promptly as it had appeared, and Carnell's pale eyes grew serious again. He drew a black medical pouch from a drawer and placed it on the desk in front of Dynus.

"You'll need that," he said. "And be certain the story you give her about it is convincing as well."

Nodding, Dynus quietly pocketed the container.

Carnell nodded in turn. "I think that will be all." But before the other man could turn away, he lifted a forestalling finger. "You do know about the arachnid species once popularly known as the black widow?"

Dynus frowned. Natural history was apparently not his subject. "Sir?"

"I would strongly suggest you read up on the topic." Carnell waved a dismissive hand toward the door.

Dynus stiffened in salute, turned on his heel and was gone.

Only after the door had rattled shut did the President allow his smile to escape once again. "Not," he said to the room, "that it is likely to help..."

 

*      *      *

_Mirage's_ viewscreen was filled with Dastram's ocean-green sphere.

Under most circumstances, it might have been considered an attractive planet, as ocean worlds  
went. But the last time they had come here, she'd been ringed with rebel ships in parking orbit.  
Today she was ship-free and radio silent, a state Vila Restal found equally disquieting.

"I don't much like the look of that." He had spoken those same words a hundred times before, on  
_Liberator,_ on _Scorpio_ , on Xenon. No one had listened to him then, either.

"I'm not getting any life readings at all," Tarrant said to Avon. "It looks as though this Vaylan fellow may have had some idea you were coming after all."

"Wait a minute..." Trienn had been monitoring the sensor scan alongside Tarrant, and pointed a finger at one of the indicators. "There's a trace... There! There it is again."

Avon came to stand beside the console, studying the read-out intently. "So there is someone alive down there."

"Rats, probably," Vila put in. "Look at it, Avon! The place is deserted."

Trienn looked dubious. "How could they evacuate an entire planet?"

"Easily," Avon replied, "if they knew the Federation were coming, and given sufficient time. The population was sparse and limited to a concentrated area of pedestal cities. There were more than enough ships in orbit to evacuate those communities."

"Well, if they left because they knew the Federation were coming," Vila added sagely, "then I think we ought to do the same. Federation guards aren't what I'd call my favorite kind of people." He cast an afterthought glance at Trienn's uniform and said lamely, "Sorry." He wasn't, really, but there was no use antagonizing her, was there?

 _"Mirage,"_ Tarrant said distinctly, "we're reading two life forms below. Can you specify type?"

Vila knew the pilot was sorry he'd asked the moment _Mirage's_ honeyed tones responded, #By all means, Tarrant. The life forms are humanoid; one male with a temperature reading of 98.9, the other female with interesting deficiencies in temperature reading which do not--#

"Thank you," Tarrant cut it off, and looked again at Avon. "It's unlikely that either of those is Vaylan. Are you sure you want to risk a look around?"

Avon glowered. "There are landing ports throughout the city, but they're equipped for little more than flyer traffic. We'll have to take one of the shuttles down."

"We?" Vila echoed miserably. He had a clear idea what was coming, but he had to ask anyway. "Who's going with you?"

Smiling in a way that had never made him popular with people, Avon clapped a hand on Vila's shoulder, evoking a startled flinch. "You are," the tech said crisply. "How very good of you to volunteer, Vila."

"It is? I mean, I did? Now wait just a minute, Avon, this is all very--"

Vila found his protests muted by the pressure of Avon's hand guiding him firmly toward the exit corridor. Some day he supposed he would learn that arguing with any of these people was a waste of energy and he would stop trying. But he doubted it.

His misgivings over this whole affair were not helped by the fact that the city in which they shortly docked was on the planet's night side. Vila had never been fond of the dark. He was enamored of it even less when the power generators were out and the place was deserted.

Sea wind, tasting of iodine and salt, ruffled their clothing the moment they'd stepped from the shuttle. Shivering, Vila tucked his hands beneath his arms and glanced out at the looming shadows of the landing port buildings. Quiet as the tomb, he thought, and then immediately wished that he hadn't. He rubbed his arms against the chill and followed Avon the rest of the way down the landing ramp, where the tech paused to consult a hand-held sensor. In the other hand, his gun kept the shadows at bay.

"I have both readings," he said, "but they are in separate buildings. One due east, the other northwest. I suggest--"

"No!" Vila intervened, already sure what the suggestion would be. "I'd really rather stay together, if it's all the same to you."

Avon turned toward him, a dark shape defined by blue halos from the light of twin half-moons. "It isn't," he said curtly, and his gun pointed toward the due east building. "Take that one. I'll meet you back here in half an hour."

"Avon, can't we--?" But the other man was already gone, heading northwest into the murk.

Vila scowled after him. "Miserable ingrate," he muttered. "See if I rescue you from certain death any time again soon."

Something moaned. Vila started and fumbled with the clumsy Federation blaster at his belt. The loud sigh came again, spurring his feet to action. He was halfway across the tarmac before he realized it had only been the shuttle's radio dish, buffeted by the wind.

Hugging the blaster close at his side, he moved on toward the squat, round building Avon had indicated. Inset in its curving walls, a series of porthole windows gazed at him like multiple eyes, reflecting the moonlight. In one of them, the light flickered as though... Wait a minute...

Vila halted, squinting at the apparition. Moonlight didn't flicker, did it? A muffled crash made him shrink back against the nearest wall, only to creep closer again when the noise was repeated and identified: someone searching for something, and none too discreetly by the sound of it. The disturbance came, not surprisingly, from behind the window with the flicker. As he watched and waited, the noises ceased and the feeble light vanished to reappear moments later in the next room, where the frenzied search began anew.

He crept lightly into the corridor through an unlocked door, intending only to catch a glimpse of whoever-it-was (some Federation thug, most likely), then go back to tell Avon that it hadn't been Par Vaylan and couldn't they leave now, please? The door to the room under current siege stood ajar. Inside, two guttering candles filled the air with their hot, waxy odor and splashed agitated shadows on the walls. Vila peered around the doorframe at the figure preoccupied with emptying the cabinets in the one-time office. Somehow, he hadn't expected a woman. Then she turned enough to make her face visible in the dim light, and Vila's sharp intake of breath betrayed him.

"Vila." The voice was even crueler than he remembered it, the features more harshly defined. The gun trembled in Vila's hand, but his finger wouldn't squeeze the trigger despite his mind's entreaty, nor would his feet obey the desire to run. She had straightened, the search forgotten, and was looking at him now the way a bird of prey watched a rabbit. "Or should I say 'Lorn?' That was the name you used when last we met."

Vila went rigid, amazed at the strength in his voice. "The name _you_ used," he said bitterly. "And I should have known no poison could kill you. You've got more borrowed lives than Avon."

She looked puzzled at that, and the filmy bodice of her gown rose and fell with her breathing in a way that made Vila acutely uncomfortable. The heat of the candles seemed excessive all of a sudden, the small room unaccountably stuffy.

"But you tried, didn't you Vila?" She came three steps toward him, and the black eyes, threatening to swallow him, held him pinned against the door.

Vila tried to breathe and found that, too, becoming difficult. "N... Nothing personal," he finally  
managed to stammer, only the jest fell on uncaring silence as she glided still nearer. One of the  
candles hissed and sputtered. "And Avon lost his borrowed lives on Sekros," she said with  
confidence, and slipped comfortably into Vila's arms. He scarcely noticed the thump of the blaster striking the floor, and after that brief intrusive sound there was nothing at all but the touch, the taste, the smell of her, filling, completing and drawing him into herself. Somewhere far from here, an itinerant voice of reason warned that this was skewed somehow; her lust had always been for others, given men like Jarvik or Avon or Tarrant, Alphas all. For Vila there had never been any regard, save that contempt her class always held for his own. Shortly, though, he lost the thought in the pleasure of her lips, surprised for only an instant at how cold they were. He wondered fleetingly just what she had been searching for when he came in -- surely Vaylan had long since taken Orac offworld -- but as she deepened the kiss, he promptly forgot that worry, too, and gave himself over to the all-encompassing sensuality of her embrace. There was nothing else to care about.

Nothing else existed.

 

*      *      *

The equipment room to which Avon's hand sensor had guided him appeared, upon one sweep of his torch, to be empty. Power generators lined the otherwise nondescript walls; conduit and cable seemed to rise and fall beneath the skittering beam of light, which had nearly returned to its starting point when the bulk of a primary turbine loomed into view, its main power line neatly severed by apparent blaster fire. No wonder the two remaining inhabitants were sequestered in the dark.

A faint scraping alerted him that someone was indeed here; his gun and the torch both swung to face the noise, finding bare wall and an ominous smear of red trailing down toward... a man in Federation uniform. He sat propped against the damaged generator, blood staining the front of his black tunic a grisly magenta. When the light struck him, he moaned and tried to turn away.

Avon aimed the light, though not the gun, away and knelt beside the wounded man. "Where is Vaylan?" he demanded. "Where has he gone? Tell me!"

Blake's specter bridled at his lack of compassion, but he mentally pushed it away. There was no room for sentiment now, no time for anything but the practicality of locating Orac before all trace of it was gone.

"...couldn't stop her," the man on the floor said weakly, and his eyes tried unsuccessfully to focus on Avon. "Followed the instructions. Everything you said. I hid the drug in 22B... flight quarters. She'll be looking for it."

"She?" Understanding none of this, Avon put a hand to the man's shoulder, willing him to rally long enough to answer.  "It is vital that you tell me where Vaylan has gone! Do you hear me?"

The dying man drew in a ragged breath. "You never told me what she was," he rasped. "Doesn't want bright light. Not even a torch. Side effect... She'll be there when he comes. Waiting for him."

The taut muscles under Avon's hand convulsed once and then went slack as the trooper's head fell to one side. With a silent curse, Avon left the body on the floor and went in search of Vila and the only other hope of Orac's recovery, whoever she may be.

Three echoes haunted him across the windswept flyer landing. _She'll be there when he comes. Waiting for him._

 _Mirage_ had attempted to report an anomaly in the temperature reading of the female humanoid...

And long before that, Blake's soft voice had warned, _Take care, Avon. Some of the dead are still among the living._

He quickened his pace toward the round building.

The glimmer of light in one of the windows precluded his need of the hand sensor. He hastened through the open door and down a curving corridor, coming quickly abreast of the door from which the feeble light spilled. Care guarded his movement, gun first, into the room, but no amount of caution had prepared him for the macabre scene he found there. Under other circumstances, he might have thought it amusing; Servalan in sordid dalliance with a Delta grade thief. But this had far more the look of something... inhuman... and deadly.

They lay together on the narrow bed, clothes and sleeping linen both in disarray, and neither had noticed his arrival amidst the feverish pace of their lovemaking, if it could be called lovemaking. To Avon it looked more like vistapes he had seen of certain blood-feeding mammals dining on live prey.

He took careful aim at the wall just beside her and fired.

At the flash of the blaster's nearby impact, she screamed and leaped from the bed, letting a dazed Vila fall away. Avon tracked her with the gun. When she turned back to glare at him, its muzzle was pointed unerringly at her heart.

"Avon."

He acknowledged the vitriolic whisper of his name in like manner. "Servalan."

"You're dead." She drew herself up sternly, commanding in spite of her disheveled clothing. "I saw you die on Sekros."

"That's odd. I had the same report of you. You're rather remarkably animated, for a corpse."

"Avon..." She started toward him in spite of the gun's threat, eyes deep and pleading and reflecting gold tongues of candle flame. He felt his hold on the weapon slip ever-so-slightly, receding as she advanced, and just as suddenly, it no longer mattered at all.

"Avon..." That voice had not belonged to her.  Who...?  "Avon, no!"

Vila's shout made him bring the gun back into play, but she did not halt her determined advance. Instead, she reached out to him and in hideous parody of Blake's final moments, said, "I've been waiting. But that is over now. Now I will have both of you." Her eyes bore into him, and Avon felt his resolve once more begin to weaken.

"Shoot her," Vila's voice pleaded from behind him. "She's going to kill both of us -- damn it,  
Avon, pull the trigger!"

The eyes promised him warmth and passion, slender hands offered the waiting pleasure of their touch...

 _Some of the dead are still among the living._ Blake had known. Blake had warned him.

He broke contact with the eyes, ignoring her cry of protest.

He saw her stumble backward, uncertain now, as he brought the gun up level with her chest.

"Do it, Avon." Vila's voice was hoarse and quavering. "Do it now!"

With an oath, Avon slapped at the setting control on the weapon and fired. Servalan tumbled away from him, striking one of the ransacked cabinets as she folded, like a child's doll, into an ungraceful heap on the floor.

Vila found enough courage to leave the bed then, gathering the shreds of both dignity and clothing around him. "Is she...?"

Avon shoved the gun at him and walked toward the unmoving figure on the floor. Vila noted the blaster's adjusted setting and frowned. "You can't ever do it, can you? In spite of everything you've said, you can't ever really kill her."

Avon shot him a condescending glare. "Don't be an idiot."

"Better a live idiot than a dead genius," Vila fired back. "That's two you owe me, Avon."

"I wasn't aware we were keeping score."

Vila came to stand beside him, sobering abruptly at the sight of the unconscious Servalan.  
"Why?" he asked quietly.

"She is our only remaining link with Orac. If anyone knows where Vaylan has gone..."

"Orac," Vila snorted. "That pompous little plastic pain-in-the-arse has cost me more--"

"Vila--"

"What?"

"Shut up and help me get her to the shuttle."

"The...? You're going to take her aboard the ship? Aboard _Mirage?_ Tarrant isn't going to like  
that."

"Well now that's a pity." Avon lifted Servalan's dead weight from the floor and placed her firmly in Vila's arms. "Put her in restraint. I'll be along in a moment."

Vila shuddered under his burden and glowered at him. "And where are you going?"

"To retrieve something from cabin 22B. I won't be long. I'm sure your... talents... are more than adequate to handle things until I arrive."

Reclaiming his torch, he turned and walked into the shadows of the hall. Vila's grumbling receded behind him. "Thank you, Avon. Thank you very much..."

 

*      *      *

The President's flagship broke its cover from behind the radio shadow of Dastram's first moon  
only after _Mirage_ had rendezvoused with its shuttle and slipped out of orbit into deep space.  
The bridge crew waited for Falco's instructions, watching the viewscreen in anticipation. "Do we follow, sir?" one of the pilots finally queried.

The President leaned back in the captain's chair. "In good time, Garrett, in good time. Give them a sporting head start -- and then stay out of sensor range."

Garrett subsided with a respectful nod, leaving Falco/Carnell to smile at the stars in anticipation. The audio-sensor implanted as part of the modification surgery had done its job well, and would continue to do so. This venture could prove be intriguing as well as profitable.

Carnell accepted a drink from the tray his valet proffered, and sipped the chilled wine contemplatively.

To the unseen and unsuspecting ship fleeing before them he lifted his glass and said, "I do so enjoy a sporting game... Servalan. Don't you?"


	5. Chapter 5

Vila desperately needed a drink.

In fact, he'd never needed one worse than he did now. It had been a long, long time; he hadn't stopped to think just how long until this moment. Funny, that. He hadn't touched a drop in over two years -- the two years and an odd number of months since Gauda Prime, though it seemed, for so many reasons, more like an eternity ago.

But now, when he really did need it, there wasn't a drop to be had anywhere on this miserable excuse for an unsupplied ship, and it depressed him even more to think how very much for granted he'd once taken _Liberator,_ with its ample stores of food and wealth and clothing.

All of which he could do with just now.

At the moment, _Mirage_ carried none of those things. She was on course for a planet called Gildar which Avon claimed would be safe, at least long enough to take on supplies, and Vila fervently hoped he was right. Nutrient pills from the medical section were not Vila's idea of a hardy repast: his stomach had been complaining noisily ever since they'd plucked Tarrant and his Federation lady-friend off that sand-lot prison planet, and then they'd taken... well, _her_... aboard on that last stop -- he didn't want to think about that, it had been Avon's doing, anyway, and oh, he hoped Gildar had a vineyard tucked away somewhere with the rest of its supply stores.

Why was it so quiet in here?

Filtered blue light from _Mirage's_ forward wall panels limned everything on the flight deck in the same hue. The quiet was suffused only by the hum of the running drives and the periodic tapping of Avon's fingers on the computer keys of the console behind Vila. He'd been at that for hours now, ever since Tarrant and that Trienn woman had gone off for rest period. Well, to let Avon near a computer and ask him not to reprogram it was like expecting to breathe air in a vacuum. So _Mirage_ was acquiring a few new tricks, and in his own good time, Avon would show them which ones. That ought to prove diverting.

Vila shuddered.

Trying not to think about it wasn't helping.

Servalan was down there, in a cell on the lower levels, and she was dead... only she wasn't. Exactly. They'd brought her back somehow. The thing they had made of her was even more deadly than the original had been, and it wanted Vila, wanted him because he, Delta thief and 'programmed' menial, had succeeded where Alphas Blake and Avon had failed. He, Vila, had been the one to kill her. And Servalan wanted to return the favor.

An undefined blue halo teased at the periphery of Vila's vision, and he started, turning to blink owlishly at the starboard alcove where the 'ghost' should have been. But there was nothing. He'd thought he'd seen it twice before this, and there had been nothing then, either.

 _Jumpy,_ he told himself. _Too jumpy. Got to calm down, Vila. Dead or not, she can't get out of there. And the only spirits you believe in come in bottles._

But it moved again -- the merest whisper of a shape, lithe and vaguely feminine, ghosting just at the edge of sight and then melting again when he tried to look where it had been.

Something was there. And he was not crazy, and he certainly wasn't drunk, however much he wished he were.

"Avon..."

Not surprisingly, his tremulous entreaty was ignored. The computer keys clicked a soft, rapid rhythm behind him. Vila swivelled his chair to face the technician and pitched his voice a tone higher.

"Avon, there's something--"

The wail of an alarm cut him off in mid-sentence. Immediately, _Mirage's_ precise feminine tones announced, #Federation pursuit craft on vector zero-nine-zero,# and the central viewscreen at once came alight with a magnified image of the threatening vessel.

"Oh, wonderful..." Vila sank into his chair as Avon cut the alarm. "We're back to cat-and-mouse games again, are we? How many this time?"

Avon's fingers played over several more keys before he answered. "One. And he came from the system we are passing. Alone and curious, perhaps." He punched a final key. _"Mirage,_ initiate new deception sequence 7-L."

The computer's plex plating shimmered as though in anticipation and replied, #Sequence initiated.#

As it answered, Tarrant arrived on the flight deck at a run, clad only in what remained of his prison colony trousers, an equally disheveled Trienn beside him, still buckling the belt on her Federation uniform.

Avon ignored them, and Vila didn't have time to speculate on the timing of their mutual arrival. Ghosts forgotten for the moment, he relaxed and leaned back in the chair.

"Have a seat, Tarrant," he invited, and one of _Mirage's_ subscreens lit up with a tactical schematic that included a very familiar outline. Vila grinned. "I think I'm going to enjoy this..."

 

*      *      *

Flight Commander Lynch stood glaring at the pursuit ship's forward viewscreen as though it had just endeavored to bite him, and snapped at his pilot's meager efforts to clarify the object drifting there.

"I said magnify, Jordan!"

"Yes sir." The pilot struggled with persuading his controls to comply, but his distraction was apparent and impossible to hide. "Hadn't we ought to call for back-up... sir?"

Lynch snorted. "From where? And for what? Probably just some damned freetrader on his way to--"

The screen image rippled, enlarged, reassembled itself -- and arrested Lynch's comment.

Jordan's mouth dropped open. "Sir..."

"Evasive action," Lynch ordered, and the words were barely uttered before a plasma bolt streaked forth from the facing vessel's gun turrets. Stars tilted and spun in dizzying patterns on the screen as Jordan obeyed his command, and when they came about, the enemy ship was circling as well, lining them up...

The weapons officer was half out of his chair. "Shall I return fire, sir?"

Jordan, wide-eyed, interrupted. "Sir, we're outsized, outclassed and outgunned. That thing is--"

"I know what it is, Mr. Jordan. Plot its course projection. Then get us out of here, course five-five-two mark seven -- and I want a channel to Space Command HQ on the double."

"Yes sir."

Lynch sank into his command chair and watched the enormous ship on the screen diminish with his pilot's hasty application of speed. He had never run from an enemy before: it was not a pleasant feeling and he hoped it would not reflect badly on an otherwise spotless career. But damn it, he was only one ship.

"SCHQ is on line, sir," Jordan reported.

Lynch nodded as an annoyed voice came over the circuit. "We're a little busy here, 5897, what is it you wanted?"

"This is Flight Commander Lynch, and what I want is the Supreme Commander. Tell him I am neither deranged nor hallucinating, nor is my crew -- but we have just been fired upon..." He took a breath and forced the words out as evenly as possible. "...by the _Liberator."_

 

*      *      *

A respectful distance from Lynch's altercation with the phantom _Liberator_ , a third ship, following well out of either's sensor range, monitored the transmission to Space Command. The man in its command chair smiled with too many teeth and with eyes that were brightly, engagingly blue. His subordinate was a nervous, pale-eyed young woman in the uniform of the presidential guard who did not like the conversation she was currently overhearing.

"Fools," she muttered. "I could intercept their signal if you--"

"Oh, tut tut, Anyss dear, mustn't impede the progress of our illustrious military!" President Falco reached out to extinguish the incredulous exchange now ensuing between Lynch and the Supreme Commander. "It won't make a difference... not to our plans, anyway."

Anyss stared at him. "Everyone knows _Liberator_ was destroyed 3 years ago. If word of this gets out--"

"That, my dear, was only Avon matching wits with a new electronic toy. I'd think he'd tire of it soon enough. In fact, I'm sure he will."

The current President of the Terran Federation got up to leave for his cabin, assuring himself first that they were back on heading to continue their stealthy pursuit of _Mirage_. As long as Avon kept Servalan aboard, the surgically implanted, shielded pulse code would lead the President's ship to her; a risk, it was true, but all gambles involved risk, and Avon, true to his Federation profile, was a gambler. Avon played the odds. He'd been led to believe that Servalan held a trump card, and he would keep her until convinced otherwise. By that time, however, the joker in this mad deck of cards would hopefully have surfaced. It was the wild card all the participants coveted, a gamepiece stolen by a knave named Vaylan and disabled by a thief named Restal, so that at the moment, it was of no use to anyone. But President Falco, better known to the players of this particular game as the one-time puppeteer Carnell, intended to bring all of them together one last time -- if only long enough to claim Orac for his own.

 

*      *      *

Vila's whoop of delight at the pursuit ship's retreat had been chorused by both Tarrant and Trienn. Avon quashed a glower of disapproval, but expressed his own satisfaction with a rapid dance of fingers over the computer keys and the ghost of a smile aimed at _Mirage's_ housing.

"Well done," he said approvingly. "Do your aft scanners detect any further pursuit?"

With the briefest of hesitations, the computer answered dully, #Negative.#

"A 360 scan then," Tarrant broke in. "Is there anything else out there at all?"

Avon noted the exchanged glance between the pilot and Trienn as the question was asked: did they suspect something more? If so, what? Before he could inquire, the metamorphosis of _Mirage's_ usually-toneless voice to an almost fluttering feminine pitch interrupted.

#I have no vessels detectable at optimum scanning range, Tarrant.# The name came out more a sigh than anything else, and what followed heaped more syrup on the already-sweet. #Would you like me to run the check again, Tarrant?#

Tarrant flushed and turned pleading eyes on Avon. "I thought you'd fixed that circuit!"

Amused despite himself, Avon indulged a short laugh, not unaware that both Vila and Trienn were chortling indiscreetly in the background. "It's next on my list," he promised with mock sincerity. "Perhaps... you ought to go and get dressed, now."

The flush turned flaming red and traveled quickly over the rest of Tarrant. While Trienn tried unsuccessfully to cover her amusement with her hands, Vila lost all pretense of composure and burst into loud guffaws.

Intersecting the merriment, _Mirage's_ saccharine but innocent inflection queried, #May I do something more for you, Tarrant?# An unspoken 'please' hung pendant at the end of the sentence. #Is something wrong? You sound quite strange. May I assist?#

The absurdity of it all overcame even Tarrant's embarrassment then. He laughed until tears had formed in the corners of his eyes and he was obliged to brush them out before he said, somewhat timorously, "No. I think you've done quite enough for the moment."

Harvesting the remains of his shredded dignity, he picked himself up then and marched off the flight deck. Avon went back to work on the keyboard with Vila's laughter still ringing in his ears, but it would in truth be some time before he found the inclination to work on Tarrant's 'problem.' _Mirage_ had a number of fascinating vistas to explore; its infatuation with their newfound pilot was, in fact, simply one of a great many items on the aforementioned list.

Immersed in a study of the computer diagrams for the drive propulsion system, he'd failed to notice Vila's approach until the thief had slipped, uninvited, into the accompanying chair. Avon glanced up, wondering how much time had elapsed, and noted that they were once again alone on the deck, Trienn and Tarrant apparently having found, elsewhere, greater amusements than _Mirage's_ lovesick encroachments on Tarrant's decorum.

Vila was still sitting there quietly, as though waiting to be acknowledged. Avon looked at him expectantly, hooded eyes asking the unspoken question, and the thief fidgeted for several moments before making a stammering start on whatever it was he had to say.

"Avon, a few minutes ago I saw... well that is I thought I... it was..." Vila's hands described indefinite patterns in the air. "Well it was sort of... you know..." He trailed off, gazing hopefully at Avon all the while as though his incoherent mumbling had just defined the problem perfectly.

"Vila, if there is one thing I have learned over the years of our dubious association, it is that translating your so-called 'explanations' requires an advanced degree in the inexact and as yet thankfully undefined science of moronic engineering. What are you trying to say?"

The jest failed to trigger Vila's usual good-humored response. Instead, the thief looked truly affronted and scooted back in the chair, folding his arms with an uncharacteristic defiance. "Oh nothing," he said bitterly. "Probably unimportant anyway. Just some little trick she conjured up. Getting back at me, no doubt."

"She?"

The affronted look returned, as though it should have been obvious who Vila had meant. "Servalan."

"Serv-- Vila, you are not making sense. Servalan is confined to the security cell on the lower deck, and that is where she will remain, for the time being. She can do nothing to harm you from there."

Vila half-concealed a shudder, and shook his head in negation of the statement. "You weren't the one she got her claws into back there. Wasn't you she nearly... She's dead, Avon. She's not even Servalan any more, just some... some thing that... that..." His voice cracked with the effort of finding a suitable word, and he pushed out of the chair in disgust. "Oh, forget it." He stalked back to his position at the forward console and collapsed there, head in hands and eyes squeezed shut. Anyone else might have dismissed it as a typical Vila sulk, but Avon knew better. For whatever reason, the thief was genuinely terrified, and Servalan had something, real or imagined, to do with it.

Servalan...

Avon checked the console chronometer. Perhaps it was time, come to that, that he pay a call on their unwilling passenger. She would have been awake for some time now. Awake and... hungry. Which was precisely the way he wanted her.

Avon got up. "As it happens, I have an appointment with our 'guest,'" he said brightly, but the levity fell on dead air. "Would you like me to deliver any relevant inquiries on your behalf?"

Vila shot him a jaundiced look. "Forget I asked," he said, and his head drooped again, reminiscent of a long-ago Vila whose habit it had been to overindulge the adrenalin and soma and fall asleep on _Liberator's_ flight deck. Except that Avon knew full well the thief had not had access to anything vaguely alcoholic for some time.

"Gladly," he replied, not meaning it. "Keep an eye on things here. I should be back shortly."

Vila jerked suddenly as though someone had struck him and twisted in his chair to face the starboard alcove. Avon turned back at the movement, one hand gripping the frame of the keyhole-shaped door. "Vila, what is it?"

At the question the smaller man started again, rather guiltily, Avon thought, as though he had been caught in some emperor's harem before he could lay hands on the 'merchandise.' He'd never seen Vila 'rattled' in quite this way before. But then, this and the Vila he had known on _Liberator_ and _Scorpio_ were not quite the same, either.

"Nothing," the thief muttered, and turned back around in the chair with a dismissive wave toward the alcove. "Well there's nothing there, is there? Y'can see for yourself. Not a thing. I'm hallucinating, that's all, and I wish this miserable crate had a drinks dispenser that wasn't empty, and... oh, go away, Avon."

Brows knit in a bewildered frown, Avon lingered for only a moment more, then did precisely that.

The force field on the cell door still hummed reassuringly as he approached it. Avon paused in the corridor to listen for any sound of movement from within, but there was none. When he drew even with the door and could see inside, the ostensibly empty cubicle startled him for a moment. With a tight smile, he slowly drew the hand weapon from the holster he had donned on the way here, and hesitated, the gun poised, on one side of the light-rimmed opening.

She was there. He knew it without having to rationalize that she was physically incapable of leaving. It was more than that. He... sensed... her presence; knew of a certainty that she was immediately behind this wall, waiting just inside the doorway. Waiting for him...

In one orchestrated motion, Avon tripped the force field control to 'off' and swung into the room to come up short in firing stance. All in the same sequence of movement, the gun recoiled instantly to a neutral position as he came face to face with his intended foe.

She was standing, barely, though it was clear she'd only done so at the sound of his approach. And she was more than simply wanting now -- in those darkened, hollow eyes he saw a dying thing, and a desolate hopelessness he'd never thought to find in the habitually merciless creature that was -- had been -- Servalan. It regarded him not with threat, but with an empty pleading that expected, all the same, no help from its tormentor.

Avon eased from the gunman's stance but kept the weapon gripped upright in both hands, wary and prepared. He had known Servalan too long to entirely trust so much as the semblance of harmless surrender. Even dying, she remained a danger.

"It seems I have left my visit rather too long," he said, though there was by design neither sympathy nor apology in his tone.

The sultry remnants of a malediction stirred in her eyes, and the bloodless lips formed a nearly-voiceless curse.

"Damn you, Avon."

With a tilted nod and a brief display of teeth, he answered her as he had once answered Tarrant. "It has been tried," he said.

Beyond goading, she merely closed her eyes and seemed to fold herself still further into the featureless corner of the cell. Deathly pale and far too thin, she looked in every aspect like a walking corpse; small wonder her presence here had so terrified Vila. Deprivation of either human victims or the drug that controlled her tenuous hold on life had brought her perilously close to a death that would, this time, be all too real.

But Avon did not intend to allow her quite so easy a release as that. Not just yet.

He let the gun drop to his side, a less obvious threat but still firmly in hand, and paced away across the bare floor, observing her with guarded loathing.

His voice, when he spoke, was a quiet monotone devoid of emotion.

"Do you want to live?"

The eyes came open then, the first trace of hope glimmering somewhere deep within. They watched him, and waited.

"Tell me where Par Vaylan is," he demanded without further preamble. "And where he's taken Orac. Tell me that, and I will allow you to live -- a little longer."

He could not, at first, gauge the reaction to his words, but the pleading gaze took on the aspect of something far older and more familiar. She trembled against a cold that was not there, and the scarcely-concealed curve of her breasts rose and fell in staccato rhythm beneath the torn remnants of gown. Despite his carefully-erected barriers, he found himself drawn by something he could not have named -- a need as strong, in its way, as her own -- and he closed silently in until he stood against her, blocking her body with his. A part of him lost itself, desiring the cool touch of the hand, the lips that sought his, the embrace that had for so many years equally attracted and repelled him. He indulged the passion for the fleeting length of time it took his rational mind to reassert itself, recalling the state in which, not long ago, he had found her with Vila, prepared to feed until the life he harbored had become her own.

The hand with the gun interposed itself between them, gripping her by the throat so that the weapon's muzzle pressed itself cruelly into the tender flesh beneath her ear.

"Oh, no," he said through gritted teeth. "Not that way, Servalan. I'm hardly given to self-sacrifice. And necrophilia has never appealed." The gun bore down still harder, causing her to recoil, though the eyes held more defiance than fear. "Where has Vaylan taken Orac?" he repeated, and the vicious shove he imparted to the gun drove her against the wall with a stifled gasp of pain. "Tell me!"

He watched the gamut of possible consequences weigh and measure themselves in her eyes, pending death, it would seem, no deterrent to her scheming.

"Help me," she whispered under the relentless pressure of his hand, "and I will take you to Vaylan."

He knew it for a lie before the words were out, a bluff born of desperation, nothing more. With difficulty, he controlled the urge to pull the trigger then and there; that also would have been too easy. And he had to be absolutely certain.

"You don't know, do you?" His own voice was nearly as desolate as hers had been. She was the last link, the last prayer he had of finding Orac, and if she didn't know...

"I can take you, Avon." The answer came too fast, too insistent to be anything but false.

"Lies." His own hand trembled as he tightened the grip on her throat, a frail pulsing under fear-tensed sinew the only indication that she was not quite dead after all. It could be so very easy now -- with a hair's breadth more pressure the too-slender neck would surely snap, and he would at long, long last be truly free of her.

With a vehement oath, he snatched the gun away and released her to collapse, shapeless, into the corner. She would suffer a more deserving death if he simply walked out now and left her to the agonies of the poison, the chemical, meant for him, that Vila had instead slipped to her over Sekros. It had been slowly consuming her ever since; why she hadn't died of it long before remained a mystery. Stasis, perhaps. That and the fact that someone had seen fit to forestall the inevitable with surgical alterations not unlike those performed on mutoids, enabling her to take life from others to prolong her own -- or to accomplish the same end with the aid of a drug.

Avon wondered who had 'cared' enough to engineer that particularly ghoulish modification.

Someone had wanted her to live just long enough... for what?

The answer to that, he realized bitterly, might very well be vital to _Mirage's_ survival.

Avon removed the medical pouch, vials and syringes swathed in folds of soft black cloth, from an inner pocket. At the movement, he saw the tormented eyes turn bright with need-filled recognition. In spite of everything, it was difficult to hate this pitiable thing that watched him hopefully from the floor. Harder still, he found to his horror, to simply and efficiently kill it -- though his expedient half knew that killing her was precisely what he ought to do.

Well, that would come soon enough.

Holstering the gun with a curt, expressive shove, he affected an indifferent stride to the door, turning back only long enough to cast her the proper suffusion of superiority and arctic contempt -- before he flung the pouch at her and walked away.

The force field reinstated, he headed aft with no clear intention of a place to go -- it was enough just to move in one direction, and to be as far from Servalan as the limited confines of the ship would allow.

The farthest point aft on this level was the observation deck, a semi-circular viewport 'open' to the stars. A glowing swarm, animated by the apparent motion of hyperdrive distortion, they hurtled themselves at the curving plex wall only to vanish to some unknown point beyond it, trailing thin, fiery veils across the void in their wake.

Avon lost himself for a time in their welcome anonymity, though it did nothing to alleviate his sense of compounded frustration at the Fates who had dangled Servalan's imagined link with Orac in front of him, only to snatch it away.

She didn't know. All the power she had once held, yet none remained that would have made her privy to the whereabouts of Vaylan, who despite his status as leader of the galaxy's most widespread revolt, remained more elusive than Blake had ever been.

A caustic smile curled the corners of Avon's lips, and to the shadowy reflection in the viewport wall he said, "The heir to your rebellion may yet win the war, Blake, against the Federation... and us as well. Its formidable talents aside, _Mirage_ is not _Liberator_ , and with both sides hunting us, we will soon run out of places to hide. Without Orac to construct a safe haven, as it did for Ensor, our life expectancy is decidedly limited."

Blake's voice, an abrupt if not unexpected intrusion, was a subtle, low-timbred recrimination. _But not as limited, perhaps,_ it rasped, _as your thinking._

Avon pivoted, as he had often done when confronting the Blake of old, but the viewing terrace and couches behind him remained unrelentingly empty.

"My thinking," he echoed, his own voice as rough-edged and hollow as Blake's had been.

Mirage _is more than a capable ship, Avon,_ the whisper admonished. _Use it._

Avon scowled at the implied derision of his prowess with _Mirage's_ computer. For all its unique properties of deception and camouflage, it remained of a basic enough design -- one that still ranked several degrees of magnitude below the sophistication and far-reaching capabilities of Orac.

"Even I cannot accomplish the impossible," he told Blake's spectre angrily. "For the self-same reasons you once espoused, Par Vaylan does not wish to be found."

 _Then stop looking for him,_ came the equally-disgruntled reply. _And use_ Mirage _to trace Orac._

Perplexed with this seemingly circular logic, Avon snorted and turned back to the viewport wall. "Orac is switched off," he said with tired abandon. "Vila has the key."

There was silence for a moment, as though Blake might be shaking his head in consternation at his answer. Then the soft-spoken, level tones responded, _Orac uses a carrier wave to investigate other computers in every corner of the galaxy -- and that carrier wave is traceable, or it should be to the one man who knows its frequency. In fact, you once told Servalan that only you could trace it. Orac, as you were once so fond of pointing out, is never truly 'switched off.'_

Avon stared into the passing stars without seeing them, and for the second time in as many hours, damned his own stupidity. He might have stayed, if only to argue the odds against locating one obscure narrow-beam frequency in all the broad expanse of the galaxy -- but it would have to wait for another time.

He was already on his way to the flight deck.

 

*      *      *

"I said your Avon isn't a particularly likeable fellow."

Gildar's spring-laden breeze had snatched most of Trienn's words away, but Tarrant heard them the second time.

He pulled his head from the close confines of the aft sensor housing to look at her. She stood below him at the base of the ladder, nearly as grease-smudged as he, and held the laser linkage and spare probes to be handed up as he required them. The steel blue arc of _Mirage's_ hull stretched behind her, a graceful, sleek contrast to _Scorpio's_ angular and battle-scarred configurations. Landing this ship, Tarrant mused, had been child's play in comparison.

He ran a hand through his tangle of curls, then turned back to adjust the installed linkage one last time. "He isn't my Avon," he replied diffidently. "And nobody asked you to like him."

When he'd descended the ladder he found her regarding him with apparent disbelief, the spare instruments trapped now in folded arms. "I don't understand why you stayed with him -- why you still stay with him. The man is unstable, any fool can see that. And after Gauda Prime--"

"I can skip the history lesson, if you don't mind," Tarrant interrupted hotly, and slapped a control on the ladder's supporting strut that would draw it back into the hull. Trienn didn't let him travel far in the direction of the next sensor plate before she'd gripped his arm, drawing him back to face her with firm-yet-gentle determination.

"My point is we don't have to stay. With a city of eight thousand less than a mile away, there are bound to be other ships, other opportunities."

"Other ships!" Tarrant echoed with a derisive laugh. "Maybe you ought to look again at this one." He swept a hand at it, upward and back. "She may not be _Liberator,_ Trienn, but she outclasses _Scorpio_ and anything that city has to offer, and she's the best chance we have of surviving, just at the moment." He matched her gaze, blue eyes to grey. "I can't speak for you, but I'll be staying. If you want to go..."

She shook her head, negating the suggestion with a restrained sigh. "I only meant that... Well that I think you ought to be careful, around Avon. He's..."

"I know. But thanks for the warning, all the same."

He moved away again. She followed, glancing furtively out across the mesa on which _Mirage_ was grounded. Tarrant couldn't help smiling at that. Old training died hard, if it ever died at all.

 _"Mirage_ is monitoring our perimeter," he assured her. "Don't worry. If anything moves out there, we'll know about it."

From speakers set into the hatch above, a silky voice responded to his mention of its name. #There is fortunately no unauthorized activity on my scanners, Tarrant,# it enthused. #Do you desire further maintenance access to the hull sensors?#

Tarrant bit back a sarcastic response, clenched both fists and said levelly. "Yes. Lower the access ladder for sensor housing amidships, starboard side."

#Yes, Tarrant.#

For once, Trienn found no amusement in the computer's obsequious dotings. She faced him again as _Mirage_ delivered the requested access ladder with the monotone whine of well-oiled gimbals. The burnished metal smelled faintly of propelyne and lubricant.

"About Avon," she said.

"What about him?"

"Can he really find this Orac of yours, with nothing but a carrier frequency to go on?"

Tarrant tested the aluminum rungs with one booted foot. "I imagine the more pressing question is whether _Mirage_ can find it. But if there's anyone in the known worlds who can tell it how, believe me, Avon can." He glanced toward the ship's bow and the curved prominence that defined the flight deck: Avon would still be there, programming search vectors for Orac's elusive carrier wave. Trienn's next question caught him somewhat off guard.

"You trust him... that much?"

At a loss to explain or understand this sudden display of insecurity, he took her by the shoulders, responding with simple honesty. "Yes."

"And Vila?"

Well now, that he really couldn't answer in quite the same way. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "He just seemed an odd choice to send for supplies, alone and with no money..."

Tarrant laughed, and the look of consternation that crossed her features made it harder for him to stop. "Even if we had money, which we don't," he told her, "Vila wouldn't have needed it."

"Then how is he supposed to acquire--?"

"Acquiring things is Vila's speciality. Trust me. He'll manage."

With the sigh of the not-fully-convinced, she nodded in capitulation. "All right. I'll leave them to their talents, if you trust them so much. And I'll stay, for now."

"Good."

He bent to kiss her, but his lips hadn't quite brushed hers when _Mirage's_ piping voice said urgently, #Tarrant!#

Prepared to ignore the interruption, he jumped when the soft warble of the intruder alarm sounded. Both of them had weapons in hand by the time _Mirage_ announced, #Unrecognized intruder on forty-six degrees northwest vector.#

"Yes we heard you!" Tarrant snapped. "Kill the alarm!"

 _Mirage_ obeyed without comment. Separating, Tarrant and Trienn circled on opposite sides of the mid supporting strut, crossing under the ship to the cover of the identical beam on the port side. From his side of the strut, Tarrant peered cautiously out at the terrain; he saw nothing but wind-ruffled grass and the first glimmer of lights from the city below, its jumble of squat, ugly buildings dyed amber by the setting sun.

"I don't see anything," he whispered.

Trienn's gun bobbed once. "Shh. Listen."

He heard it in the next moment. Footsteps coming up the incline, none-too-quietly, slipping every now and then in the loose rock and soil. It couldn't be Vila. _Mirage_ would have recognized Vila.

He readied the gun and waited.

The footsteps halted, as though somehow aware of the danger, and from just beyond the rim a nervous young voice inquired, "Is Tarrant there? I was told to ask for Tarrant. Don't... don't shoot, please. Mr. Restal sent me."

Tarrant nearly laughed aloud at the use of the archaic title; Vila would undoubtedly fancy such backwater-culture formalities.

"All right," he said loudly, though he kept the gun in place. "Come on up. But keep your hands in sight."

The figure that presently emerged, still slipping on the embankment's unstable soil, was thin, adolescent and female. At least, Tarrant judged it to be female from the lace-rimmed cotton blouse and homespun skirt. The features were otherwise androgynous; mouse-brown, bowl-cut hair and an utter lack of body curvature.

"I'm alone," she announced when she had at last reached the summit. "He... Mr. Restal told me to say that."

"So I see," Tarrant answered patiently, not moving from behind the strut. "Well what did Mister Restal send you out here for? And where is he?"

"Oh well he's... he sent me with a flyer and your supplies -- they're just at the bottom of the hill there. And then he said to tell you he had an appointment to keep and you shouldn't expect him for a little while yet. Maybe not till morning."

Tarrant lowered his gun and aimed a wry smile at Trienn. "There, you see?" he quipped lightly. "You can always trust Vila -- to be Vila."

He holstered his weapon, and strode confidently out to meet their pleasure-prone thief's nervous messenger.

 

*      *      *

It was too soon.

No longer smiling, Carnell paced the deck with ill-disguised impatience. Anyss lingered beside the communications console to his right; the officer stationed there studied the messages on his screen with a concerned frown before turning to address the president.

"Central reports both Kidron and Tanis have now fallen to rebel forces, sir."

Carnell scarcely heard. The red-brown planet on the viewscreen was of greater importance to him just at the moment: somewhere on its surface, _Mirage_ had gone to ground. But it could not be to retrieve Orac -- it was too soon, surely, for that. Vaylan was hardly likely to be here at any rate: from the reports, he was busy conquering planets elsewhere. So there had to be another reason. Refueling and supply run, perhaps. Yes, that would make sense.

He paced again, aware of Anyss' glare boring into his back. They were running out of time...

"That's the eighth stronghold we've lost in the past week alone," he heard Anyss say behind him. "It's not my place to advise, sir, but shouldn't the President be on Earth to direct our forces against these uprisings?"

Earth. Yes, the President ought to be on Earth. Vaylan's rebellion was proving more troublesome than any of its predecessors. But without Orac, they had little hope of repressing it for long. He had to obtain Orac, and to do that he must take Avon. He hadn't intended it to be so soon; he would rather wait and be led to the prize. But his choices were becoming limited.

"You're right," he said to Anyss, and at her surprised look, he flashed a less-than-pleasant smile and added, "It is not your place to advise."

Chastised, Anyss fell silent, and in the welcome calm, Carnell continued pacing. A moment later, he spun on the ship's pilot. "Establish orbit, Garrett," he ordered. "I want _Mirage's_ location pinpointed and a party on the surface before it can lift off. We're going to take them."

 

*      *      *

Vila filled his glass for what might have been the ninth or tenth time -- he'd stopped counting long ago, and he felt far too good to care now anyway. The private inn room was comfortable, though not the cleanest he'd seen, even by Delta standards, and the fact that he shared it only with a tall glass and two bottles of very fine local brew might at any other time have been cause for concern, but at the moment, nothing short of a supernova could have bothered Vila Restal in the slightest.

He'd spent a thoroughly enjoyable day in the city, lifting wallets, pilfering pockets and then spending the ill-gotten gains. Certainly he deserved a little rest and relaxation after all that work -- not even Avon could deny him that. Not that he'd have the opportunity to try.

Vila slouched at the crude wooden table and rested his head on his hands, content in the first alcoholic euphoria he'd managed since the destruction of Xenon base over two years before. The dreams were pleasant now, not at all the ghostly waking nightmares he'd been forced to endure of late aboard _Mirage._ He dreamed of Gan, and of the first days they had spent on the _Liberator_ after Blake had plucked them both from Cygnus Alpha. They'd gone wandering the huge ship together, he and Gan, unable to believe their good fortune, and then having discovered the food and drink dispensers, availed themselves of a hardy feast and more than a few potent libations of alien design.

"You really enjoy stealing?" Gan had asked him in that utterly innocent tone that might, in anyone else, have been thought pretentious.

Vila had given him an open look of mock offense. "Of course. Doesn't everyone?"

Gan laughed. "Well no, not everyone. I mean it's wrong, taking things that aren't yours to begin with."

Vila's shrug was expansive. "Depends who you steal it from, dunnit?"

They took another drink, leaning back to appreciate _Liberator's_ clean and particularly spacious surroundings. After the _London_ and the cramped, depressing atmosphere of Cygnus Alpha, this was sheer paradise.

"You never told me how it ended, you know," Gan said suddenly.

"Eh?" Vila squinted at him through an inebriated haze, reminding himself that he really must find out what this stuff was called and look into cornering the bottling franchise. "How what ended?"

"The limerick," Gan replied, a large and friendly blur across the table. "The one you started to tell Arco in the landing cell. 'There once was a lady from Cygnus,' or something to that effect."

"Oh, that." Vila grinned. "Just something I wrote in my spare time. I had rather a lot of that, you know. In prison they..." The grin faded for a moment, and he shook his head. "Well anyway, it goes, 'There was a young lady of Cygnus / Who thought it a crime to go wigless / So she oft changed her hair / While the rest went quite bare / Which left the men wide-eyed and witless.' Rather brilliant, don't you think?"

Gan's expression implied he thought just the opposite, but he nodded and politely refrained from comment. Vila downed another swallow of the potion and contentedly shut his eyes. The feeling of freedom and safety for the first time in many years was overwhelming, and combined with the drink had conspired to make him both drowsy and lethargic.

He blinked, yawned and pried his eyes open to find himself on _Liberator's_ flight deck. Must have nodded off on watch again. Oh well. What Blake and Avon didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and the others never faulted him for napping now and then. Especially not Cally; Cally always understood, had always been kind to him, and when her watch followed his, would always shake him awake with gentle hands and soft admonitions.

_Wake up, Vila!_

She had lovely, slender hands, did Cally. But they were shaking him a bit harder than seemed necessary.

_Vila!_

She sounded strange, far away somehow, and yet she had both hands on his shoulders and had pushed him upright in the chair. Something else was wrong, but he could not quite put a finger on it yet.

"All right, all right, I'm awake," he insisted, but she shook him again anyhow, as though to make certain. Vila tried valiantly to focus on her but could see only an indistinct image that despite an odd, hazy quality was nevertheless indisputably Cally. Well, her watch did follow his, after all. Of course it was Cally...

 _Vila, you must listen,_ she said, and the urgency in the words made him sit up and hastily blink the sleep from his eyes. _Go back to your ship,_ she went on, and while he tried to make sense of that, _You have to warn the others. Your ship was followed here, and they are coming for you. Go and tell Avon that he must lift off, now. Hurry, Vila!_

He didn't understand. Lift off from where? And why should he tell Avon rather than Blake? The intensity of her warning had, however, frightened him enough to urge him to his feet. He heard the chair fall behind him, scraping a floor that did not belong to _Liberator,_ and the unfamiliar pattern of a soiled carpet tried to snag his feet as he turned to run for the exit corridor -- only the hexagonal opening wasn't there, and when he wheeled again to ask her why, neither was Cally.

The table with its overturned chair, empty glass and bottles all stared back at him accusingly. Vila ran toward them with outstretched hands, a near-sob wrenched from him as he stumbled and caught the table for support.

"Cally!"

He turned circles in the dingy room, crying her name, until he saw... something... move against the back wall: the ghost shape from aboard the ship, except that he could see it now, the after-image of Cally, fading even as it spoke for the last time, a sighing, urgent plea.

_Run, Vila! Now!_

"Cally..."

The smudged, bare wall answered him with mute denial. Cally was gone. But she had said...

Panic already threatening to overcome his efforts, Vila fumbled open the unlocked door and fled into the night.

 

*      *      *

#I do not understand the reference,# _Mirage_ complained with the barest hint of petulance. #Please define terminology, 'a line through the pattern of infinity.'#

Avon's grim smile was as lost on the computer as his reference had been. "Never mind," he said. "Continue scanning by sector for the programmed carrier wave; report any indication of activity to me immediately."

#Affirmative.#

A sudden commotion from outside the entryway nearly obliterated _Mirage's_ response. Tarrant came through the opening first, a panting Vila two steps behind him, Trienn bringing up the rear.

"Never mind how I know!" Vila said through gasps for air. "Just get this ship off the ground, will you?? I tell you they're coming!"

Tarrant slid into the pilot's seat with practiced ease to begin a hasty series of pre-launch checks. Avon decided against a request for explanation and turned instead to the blue-panelled computer wall.

 _"Mirage,_ pursuit check."

#There is no...# the computer began confidently, and halted in mid-sentence.

Avon glared at it as the whine of starting engines began rising around them. "Well, come on! Is there anything out there or not?"

#A single ship has entered sensor range, entering Gildar orbit bearing zero-zero-one.#

"Straight for us," Tarrant muttered and shot an inquisitive glance in Vila's direction. "Forward thrusters on line."

Trienn's rapid response came from the neighboring console. "Running."

"Aft launch control."

"Check."

"Flight vector?"

"One-one-nine. Launch window at seven mark five, one minute seven seconds and counting."

"We can't wait that long!" Vila cried from the chair he'd strapped into. "Can't you make it any faster?"

"Not and keep us in one piece!"

Tarrant's answer was intercut by _Mirage's_ soft query of his name. #Emergency launch procedure is activating,# she purred, and Tarrant's board lit up of its own accord, causing the pilot to draw his hands away as though the controls had suddenly burned him.

"What are you--?" he began, and then was promptly obliged to grab the console for support as the ship shuddered violently around them. Avon latched his own launch-belt and held on, though it hardly seemed necessary in the next moment. _Mirage_ lifted with enough G-force acceleration to meld him with the chair, and, engines screaming against the strain of escaping the atmosphere, sliced upward into Gildar's ionosphere.

Moments later, the G-forces vanquished, _Mirage's_ viewscreen 'opened' to the stars, and the computer's voice reported disinterestedly, #Unidentified craft matching course and speed.#

"Refractory shielding," Avon said crisply. "Go to mode L-7 and arm the weaponry banks."

 _Mirage_ seemed to hesitate yet again. #Pursuing craft dropping to sublight speed,# it announced a moment later. #Now out of sensor range. Do you wish to cancel deception mode command?#

Avon eyed the screen in wordless dismay for a moment. "Yes," he said offhandedly, and then unclipped the launch-belt to rise and turn in Vila's direction. Trienn and Tarrant, he noted, had both done the same. The thief was still glued to his chair, staring at the viewscreen and its rapidly passing array of stars.

It was Tarrant who first moved to tower over him, asking the question Avon himself had been about to voice.

"How, Vila?"

The thief started. "Eh?"

"How did you know, before _Mirage_ had even detected their approach? Who told you?"

"Better still," Avon added before Vila could answer, "who were they?"

Vila blinked at him. "How would I know?"

"That," Tarrant said, "is what we're asking!"

Avon watched hypothetical gears spin behind Vila's expression, and knew that what followed would be anything but the truth. What the hell had happened to him down there?

"Sixth sense," Vila said earnestly into Tarrant's incredulous gaze. "I've told you all along I had it -- I always know when I'm in danger. It's instinctive!"

"Vila..."

The thief reacted to Tarrant's further prodding with an angry unsnapping of his launch harness and a wave of the hand as he came out of the chair. "Shut up, Tarrant. Believe me or not, suit yourself, but leave me alone!"

With that, he stormed to the accessway, and just before charging through it, hesitated for the briefest of moments -- to look back at Avon.

It was a look that unnerved the computer tech for reasons he couldn't have fathomed. The hazel eyes were an amalgam of curiosity and an odd sort of sympathy.

Then Vila had padded away, and the three remaining occupants of the flight deck were left with their bewilderment.

 

*      *      *

The push that deposited Servalan on the medical cot was one Avon felt no need to administer gently. Under the threat of Trienn's gun, he strapped her, hissing imprecations at him that he chose all the while to ignore, tightly to the table and applied the diagnostic sensors to either temple, overcoming her effort to turn her head away by placing his free hand less-than-kindly at her throat. The most poisonous of serpents couldn't have glared its displeasure any more vehemently, but he ignored that as well and began programming touch pads on the medical computer.

"I still don't understand what you're looking for," Trienn said off-handedly.

Servalan shot the woman a mind-your-own-business look from her rather undignified position on the cot. "Neither do I." She spat the words in Avon's direction, but he was intent on the computer and pretended not to hear.

"Something led them to us," he said in answer to Trienn's question. "And the only things we have brought aboard of late were the medical kit, which is clean... and her." The pronoun came out with the intonation of a curse.

"What about the food and clothing supplies from Gildar?" Trienn wondered. "Could they have been a trap somehow?"

"It seems unlikely."

His manipulations brought the medi-scan viewer on line, and within moments he had an answer to his suspicion on the screen. Proof that Servalan's surgical alterations had included more than just the modifications that had brought her back from the 'dead.'

Trienn eyed the tiny needle-like object embedded in the brain tissue with open disgust. "What is it?"

"A pulse-code transmitter. One programmed, I would imagine, to bypass our monitors, perhaps by disguising itself as something else. Something... routine."

He spoke the words to Servalan, daring her to deny it, but the look on her face imparted neither denial nor anger any longer -- it was something much more akin to horror.

"You didn't know," he said. It was not a question.

"Damn him." The whispered words were perilously close to a sob. "I'll kill him for this."

Avon pounced on an unexpected chance. "I may yet grant you the opportunity," he said silkily. "Who is he?"

Her eyes veiled warily at that, but he pressed on, as certain as she must be that he had the advantage now. "Help me to catch the hunter in his own trap, and he is yours. You have my word. Now who is he?"

The name came, at last, through clenched teeth. "Carnell."

Avon blinked. "The puppeteer?"

"His name is Falco now."

"Is it indeed?" Avon's eyes narrowed. "The same Falco whom all the viscasts have announced ascended to the Presidency not long ago?"

Venom dripped in the reply. "The office has changed hands rather frequently of late."

"So I've noticed. It hasn't done much for so-called party unity. In the absence of a stable leadership, the regionally governed planets have been falling to rebellion forces by the dozen. While President Falco prefers to spend his time stalking us. Why?"

The haunted eyes told him that the answer to this should have been all too obvious. "Why do you think?"

A bitter laugh like the sound of splintering ice escaped Avon's lips as he uttered the name. "Orac."

Servalan's reply was forestalled by the sudden insistent bleeping of the intercom unit. When Trienn had tripped the switch, Tarrant's anxious tones cut in immediately.

"Avon I think you'd better get back up here."

He cast the intercom an annoyed glance. "What is it?"

"Our 'friend' is still out there, pacing us at two-thousand spacials. And he has company."

Without bothering to acknowledge the message, Avon headed for the door, pausing only long enough to snarl a command at Trienn.

"Watch her," he ordered, and walked out before the blonde woman could protest.

When he arrived on the flight deck, he found Tarrant at work with the tactical screen, where two triangles winked on and off at tangent angles from _Mirage's_ more solid outline. Avon slid into the neighboring chair, ostensibly unnoticed until Tarrant had finished with the sequence of controls he was operating.

"I didn't know we had an extended-range scan until I looked for it," the pilot said absently, pressing a final switch. "That's when I found him." One of the triangles vanished; the other, on a straight-line course behind them, continued to blink. "It's the same one that came after us on Gildar. All the configurations match."

Avon nodded. "According to Servalan, it belongs to our illustrious new Federation President. What do you know about the other one?"

"Turned up when I asked for a longer range sweep. It's on a different relative trajectory and whoever he is he's good at deceptive flight variations -- but he's been turning back to shadow our course every time."

"Sister ship in the President's armada, perhaps?"

At Tarrant's touch, the second triangle came back into play on the screen. "I don't think so. _Mirage,_ repeat the information on pursuing vessel tangent zero-six-one."

Perhaps in response to the serious tone of his voice, the computer's reply, though still far from its customary monotone, was less affectionate than usual. #Vessel is tracking at 2083 spacials, intermittent deviation to random course pattern. Configuration indicates Saridian origin.#

"Saridian?" Avon's eyes slitted. There had been something about Saridia...

"I know," Tarrant was saying. "It didn't make sense to me either."

"Oh but it does. Saridia is one of several twelfth sector planets that fell to rebellion forces in recent weeks."

"Rebel..." Tarrant gaped at the screen for a moment. "You mean we have both sides of the war on our tail?"

"It may be more than that. _Mirage,_ you said the vessel at zero-six-one was tracking us. By what means?" He presumed that President Falco would be disinclined to share his pulse code frequency with a rebel ship. So how had this one found them?

#Acknowledgment of recognition signal,# _Mirage_ answered curtly.

Tarrant stiffened, facing the computer with a look of shock and open betrayal. "What the...? You sent them a recognition signal?"

#No,# _Mirage_ said in the semblance of meek tones. #The proper recognition code was transmitted to us.#

Avon came abruptly to his feet, moving past a stunned Tarrant to the tactical screen. His voice, when he spoke, was low and rasping. "Transmitted by whom, _Mirage?"_

#That information has been classified.#

Grimacing at the flashing indicator, Avon said, "Yes, I'm sure it has."

"Avon, what on earth is she talking about? Who else could know _Mirage's_ recognition signal?"

"Mohammed," Avon breathed. "Coming to the mountain."

Tarrant looked as blank as Vila once had to the same reference. "Who the hell is Mohammed?"

"Vaylan!" Avon wheeled and paced toward the console. "It has to be."

"Ah," Tarrant muttered, and visually scanned his board for a moment. "That previous owner you mentioned. Or should I say, previous thief? Give me ten minutes to lay in evasion maneuvers and I'll see we lose them both."

Avon arrested the hand that had been about to start programming buttons. "No... Don't do that. Don't do anything, for the moment." He dropped the pilot's hand and spun away again. He needed time to think, time to devise the trap... and a way to catch both hunters in its net. But more importantly...

 _"Mirage,"_ he said, "scan the ship at zero-six-one for designated carrier frequency Orac."

The reply was immediate, if not quite satisfying. #Scan negative.#

Avon scowled. "Naturally."

The intercom's squeal for attention startled them both. Avon had no sooner flipped the toggle switch than Trienn's cry came stridently over the circuit.

"Tarrant!"

There was a muffled sound, impossible to identify, and then, disconcertingly, nothing.

"Trienn? Trienn, what is it? What's happening down there??" Tarrant rattled the switch uselessly. In the next moment, he was on his feet, gun in hand and heading for the exit corridor. Avon followed close behind.

The first thing Avon noticed on their arrival at the medical section was the empty diagnostic bed, its restraints unbuckled and hanging loose. The second thing was Trienn, a limp figure sitting just beneath the intercom. An ugly red stain smeared the wall just above her.

Grey eyes opened at Tarrant's touch, surprising Avon: Servalan did not often leave her victims breathing.

"What happened?" he demanded before Tarrant could say anything at all. The question earned him an irate glare from the pilot, to which Avon was deliberately oblivious. Both of them knew there would be no point in heroic measures: from the look of it, Servalan had used Trienn's own weapon, and Federation paraguns were not designed to encourage survivors.

"Tarrant..."

"I'm here. Don't try to talk."

"Something in her eyes," Trienn murmured. "I'd untied her before I knew why..."

Gripping his gun tighter, Avon swore softly. In his haste he had forgotten Servalan's newfound talent for hypnotic persuasion.

"Vila..." Trienn had a death-hold on Tarrant's hand, and the pilot had gone nearly as pale as she. "Went after Vila."

Avon did not need to hear more. Nor did he expect Tarrant to follow his charge back out into the corridor. The lift was interminably slow, dragging precious seconds into minutes he could ill-afford. He narrowly restrained the urge to blast the sluggish doors when the lift announced its arrival on level two; he did force them open more quickly, prying the doors apart by hand. Vila's cabin was a short, breathless sprint down the lefthand corridor.

His haste proved futile in the end: the room was empty, lacking even the trace of a struggle. He'd barely stepped inside when, shipwide, the intercoms whistled and came to life with a silken, too-familiar voice.

"Avon," it said, and the name reverberated down the corridor and beyond, an echoing litany. "I have your ship, and I have Vila. Make any effort to tamper with the computer, or come near the flight deck, and he will die -- less than pleasantly."

Avon's hand slapped the response control in a release of pent-up fury. "What do you want, Servalan?"

"We are approaching Edessa. Largely rain forest, and uninhabited, but it should suit my purposes well enough. We are going to land. And then we will wait -- for Carnell."

"I already gave you my word that you could kill him," Avon grated. "Wasn't that enough?"

Apparently it wasn't; he heard the circuit close with a resounding snap and the cabin was suddenly, eerily quiet.

Scowling fiercely, he dropped into a chair -- Vila's chair, he realized with an unwarranted tinge of guilt -- and set his mind to the task of finding some way, any way, to once more outmaneuver Servalan.

 

*      *      *

Vila stared down at the pilot's console and shook his head for the second time in as many minutes.

"I tell you I can't," he insisted, unashamed of the fact that his voice quavered. "I'm not a pilot, I don't know how to land the ship."

The paragun came up to point at him again, a slender and deadly extension of her forearm. "You flew it well enough on Sekros, Vila. And you will pilot it now. Tell the computer to establish orbit."

His ruse having failed, Vila meekly obeyed, making no effort to hide the fact that his hands were shaking as he deactivated _Mirage's_ main drives and keyed the orbital approach. Servalan's eyes followed every move.

"You have the key?" she demanded suddenly, and when Vila merely nodded, "Show me."

Orac's plastic activator slid easily from his pocket despite trembling fingers. He lay it on the console, and as he did, met her eyes for the first time. It was all Vila could do not to cringe: those eyes were so desolate... and utterly insane. They strayed to the key only for a moment, then traveled back to Vila.

"Take us down," she ordered.

 

*      *      *

Anyss spun from the computer console, her thin face a mask of fury. "I will remind the President again," she recited, "of his responsibility. We now have reports of fighting on both Amastrus and Mideon. If they fall, the next logical target of rebel assault will be Earth. We must turn back, and we must do it now."

Watching Edessa revolve beneath them, Carnell deliberately turned away from her. "Not," he enunciated slowly, "until I have Orac."

The sound of a weapon being drawn was somehow the last thing he'd have expected of Anyss, yet when he looked it was there -- small, concealable, standard issue of the Presidential guard, though no less deadly for its compact size -- and she held it pointed accurately, unmistakably, at him.

"Orac is not here," she said, and as a reluctant afterthought, added a tight, "sir. In accordance with Council edict four-four-seven, I am hereby commandeering this vessel on the grounds that the President has been deemed mentally unfit to command."

A flippant response had always come easily to Carnell. It so readily hid the less pleasant emotions. "Has he indeed?" he queried softly. "Well the President must say he's certainly never been 'deemed' anything quite so formidable before. Perhaps you would do him the august favor of informing him who has taken it upon himself -- or herself -- to make such a daring, if inaccurate, psychological assessment?"

His answer was a chorus of soft leather uniforms, rasping as their owners rose from chairs around the flight deck and moved into wordless formation beside Anyss, their faces stern and determined, every eye indicting him. How in the seven hells had he failed to see this coming? Surely there must have been indications, warning signs. But he had been far too distracted... no, obsessed... with getting his hands on Orac. Careless. Very careless. They tossed you out of psychostrategist school for overlooking little matters far more trifling than this.

"We have a course back to Earth plotted and laid in," Anyss told him quietly. "We're going to implement it now. I think perhaps the President should go back to his cabin and rest. He'll have a great deal to do when we arrive."

Carnell's gaze swept over the silent array of his crew. "Perhaps you're right," he conceded in falsely pleasant tones. "If you'll excuse me?"

Anyss nodded, but turned with the gun to follow as he passed. Carnell offered no protest, no resistance. A master player knew when to concede the game, and when to re-engage his opponent.

Defeated but not yet out of the war, the checkmated king left the board.

 

*      *      *

Vila squinted through the murk at the grey outline of _Mirage's_ fuselage and wrapped his arms tighter around his knees. Moisture dripped constantly from the low-hanging clouds above, and insects whined in his ears, intent on making a meal of him. He was cold, damp, tired and miserable, all conditions that waiting out here in the dark for three hours had done absolutely nothing to alleviate. He wondered why Servalan had not simply shot him long before now and had done with it, but it was hardly a question he could bring himself to voice.

"Can't we wait inside the ship?" he asked instead. "I mean, you can kill him just as dead in there as out here, can't you? Well, can't you?"

The pleading tone had no overt effect on the frail woman who stood over him, ostensibly oblivious to the cold, the gun gripped tightly in a death-pallored hand. "Oh, no," he heard her murmur into the shadows. "Avon and Tarrant will remain aboard, and we will wait here. No one is going to interfere."

Quite how that was meant to answer his question Vila had no idea. But he nodded anyway, as though it did, huddled closer to the boulder that formed his only protection from the night wind, and said no more.

Something roused him an indeterminate time later. Servalan had come erect from the rock on which she'd been resting, the gun aimed back toward _Mirage_. When Vila looked in the same direction, he saw a figure moving cautiously toward the ship. It halted just below the hatch, looking up at the closed portal as though staring alone might be enough to gain entry. Vila heard him say something, words the wind snatched away, and then, incredibly, came the moan of the door sliding back to lower the landing ramp. How could he know...?

"Carnell!"

Servalan had moved into the open to challenge him, but the man who pivoted to face her, gun coming level with her own, was not Carnell. Edging nearer himself, Vila emitted a small gasp of recognition that caused Servalan's eyes to dart briefly his way.

"Par Vaylan," Vila said to no one in particular. The key in his pocket suddenly conspired to bulge conspicuously, and he backed away a step, but neither Vaylan nor Servalan appeared to notice. The latter had turned that... look... of hers on their blond visitor, and already the man's gun had dipped to point harmlessly at the ground.

"Where is Carnell?" she demanded.

Vaylan blinked stupidly. "Who?"

"Falco!" she spat at him. "What have you done with Falco?"

A little of the arrogance Vila remembered crept into the dazed reply. "I've toppled his rather short-lived reign," Vaylan said from behind an insipid grin. "Or I'm about to, as soon as our forces reach Earth."

"You fool. He was here. He was coming here and you've warned him away!" The wrath in her eyes and voice, beyond anything rational, made Vila want to shrink back into the dark -- anywhere to be away from what he knew would come next. But his feet refused to oblige him, and he was forced to watch helplessly as Vaylan's gun slipped from nerveless fingers, and Servalan closed on him like an animal stalking trapped prey. She still held her own weapon, but instead of employing it, reached with her free hand to Vaylan's throat and seized hold. The man started, but snared by those eyes, could not move away. Vila wanted to shout at him, to run forward and push him, anything at all -- only none of it would have helped, and gods, where were Tarrant and Avon, anyway? The hatch had been open for he didn't know how many minutes, and that hatch had been all that confined them, so where were they?

Vaylan's face, the picture of smug confidence only moments ago, had gone ashen. Her spidered fingers clamped his throat, siphoning color, breath, life...

Vila saw a movement to the right of the open hatch, and in a moment, Tarrant's head and the muzzle of one of _Mirage's_ hand weapons appeared at the edge of the door. The gun took aim, leveled, and hesitated. Vaylan was in the way.

 _Shoot,_ Vila wanted to scream _. It doesn't matter about him -- he's already dying!_

But Tarrant didn't fire, and something drew Vila's attention back to the frozen tableau of Servalan and Vaylan. Her right hand was moving, drawing the gun up from behind the shield of Vaylan's body.

"Tarrant!!"

Vila's shouted warning came as she pushed Vaylan callously aside, and fired at the hatchway. The shot took Tarrant in the shoulder; he flew backward with a startled cry, and his gun tumbled uselessly down the ramp toward Servalan. Vila's panicked rush forward launched him painfully onto the rocky soil when something tripped him midway. _Can't even die on your feet,_ he thought bitterly to himself. _She's going to kill us, one by one, and there's nothing you can do. Nothing at all._

Servalan's voice made him lift his head from the face-down sprawl in which he'd landed. She had glided to the very foot of the gangway, and was gazing up into the ship.

"Avon," she said, and all the manipulative assurance she had ever commanded was back in that single uttered name. "I know you're there. Throw the gun down and come out. Now, Avon. Or Vila dies."

It shouldn't have worked -- not on Avon, to whom self-preservation had always meant more than anything. Vila couldn't believe he was hearing the sound of a gun falling, or seeing the figure that moved into the doorway from the left side. Avon's hands were partially raised. He took two steps down the ramp and stopped, locking hate-filled gazes with Servalan until Vila was certain he would produce another gun from somewhere and kill her where she stood.

But Avon did nothing. His eyes had changed, and hands dropping abruptly to his sides, he stared at her now with overt desire rather than loathing. Her predatory smile answered.

"Come here," she said.

Incredibly, he obeyed her, walking complacently down the ramp and into her waiting arms. Vila watched in horror, half expecting some trick on Avon's part, a last moment salvation hidden somewhere on his person -- but it was not to be. Whatever resistance he might have had to her lethal charms had been vanquished by the strength she had drawn from Vaylan, and she lured Avon now into the same trap, this time by a slithered embrace and craven kiss, and he responded to both with eager compliance.

"No..." Vila's whimper of protest went unnoticed by either of them. "Avon, no..." He tried to find his feet only to stumble again, landing on something that bruised his ribs and wrenched a cry of pain from him. Rolling back from the offending object, he struck out with one hand to knock it away, and realized almost too late that it was Vaylan's gun he had fallen on. Vila deftly re-oriented his hand and snatched the weapon to him, fumbling to right it, to hold it in a double-fisted grasp as he struggled to his knees.

The barrel came shakily into line with the soft white curvature of Servalan's spine. Vila swallowed, readjusted his finger on the trigger, carefully aligned the gun again...

A faint scraping sound at the top of _Mirage's_ loading ramp resolved itself into Tarrant. Pale and clutching his right shoulder, he leaned on the hatch frame for support and looked past the deathly pair below him to Vila, his eyes entreating more clearly than words.

_Kill her, Vila. Do it now!_

In all his years as a fugitive, aboard _Liberator_ and _Scorpio_ and now _Mirage_ , Vila Restal had only killed twice -- in the heated battle to escape Cygnus Alpha, and again when a Federation guard on Mecron had been about to fire on Tarrant and Dayna. And neither time had it been anything like this. Not even Servalan as a target could make taking a life easy. Poisoning her had been a simple matter of leaving the baited trap behind, but this...

He tried to think of all the reasons why she ought to die, of the thousands -- millions -- she had murdered on Auron and on other worlds, but in the end he could only think of Cally. Servalan had murdered Cally, too...

Vila brought the gun into line for a final time, held it steady, and closed his eyes. He pictured Cally as he had last seen her, before the bombs had gone off in the underground complex on Terminal, smiling at him in that gentle, indulgent way that only Cally could smile.

With one swift, reflexive jerk of his forefinger, Vila pulled the trigger.

The shrill report of the discharge was followed close on by a muted gasp, and then by the clatter of the gun as Vila let it fall into the dirt. When he opened his eyes, it was to see Avon, shaken but still very much alive, kneeling over the limp white form of a thing that had once been Servalan.

 _She was already dead,_ he told himself fiercely. _She died a long time ago, even if she didn't know it yet. Well you've just reminded her -- for Cally!_

Tarrant had made his way unsteadily down the ramp to stand at Avon's side. His presence was ignored, but all the unanswered questions were put to rest by the look he sent the thief. It said, _It's over, Vila. This time... this time she really is dead._

A low moan made Vila start, and brought Avon's head up to stare at the nearby patch of ground where Par Vaylan lay. As Vila watched, Avon pried the gun from Servalan's fingers, his eyes never leaving Vaylan as the head of the rebellion forces stirred and tried to get his feet underneath him to stand. Avon was beside him before he could quite complete the maneuver. One hand gathered Vaylan's tunic-front into a knot and yanked the man gruffly upright. Avon's voice was a concise, deadly monotone.

"Where is Orac?"

Vaylan recollected his hauteur with amazing speed, and shook Avon's hands free. "You don't really expect me to answer that?"

In no mood to be trifled with, Avon brought the gun to bear against Vaylan's temple. "Oh, but I do."

Vaylan's smug expression did not waver. "You'll never get it that way," he parried with all the grace of a seasoned gambler. "I'll make you an offer, though. Give me the key, and I'll see to it your name is cleared of all charges on both sides. Not even the rebellion will want Kerr Avon any more."

Avon's head tilted to one side, a gesture Vila had often seen him use when he'd been about to flay Blake with some new and cutting riposte. "As far as the general public on both sides is concerned," he said icily, "Kerr Avon was executed on Sekros." The gun pressed his point further home. "Now for the last time, where is Orac?"

Vaylan looked shaken at last, perhaps more by the look in Avon's eyes than by anything else. But whatever he'd been about to say was pre-empted by the warble of _Mirage's_ intruder alert.

#Four humanoid readings bearing eight-zero-eight,# she announced. #Approaching on foot from ship grounded at eight-zero-zero.#

"He didn't come alone," Tarrant said as Vila finally gained his feet and started for the ramp. He tried not to look at the crumpled white thing he had to navigate around in order to get there. Avon hadn't moved though, and still held the gun at Vaylan's head.

"Leave it," Tarrant prompted. "He's not about to tell you, and we've got to get out of here."

#Further information,# _Mirage_ said with a distinctly anxious tone. #Retro-course trajectory of ship at eight-zero-zero indicates planet of flight origin Kidron.#

Irritated, Tarrant shook his head. "So?"

#Cross-correlation of program prerogatives ensued from this data,# she answered as though Tarrant hadn't spoken at all. #Carrier frequency Orac operating and confirmed planet Kidron.#

Avon's eyes went suddenly bright as he snatched the gun back, aiming it instead at Vaylan's chest. With a chilling half-smile, he said, "I think you've just become superfluous."

Confidence flagging, Vaylan raised a pre-emptive hand. "The fact remains," he said, "you'll still never reach it -- without me."

"I'll take that risk."

"I wouldn't if I were you. It's a large planet, and my security is very efficient."

"Well whatever you're going to do, get on with it!" Tarrant snapped at Avon. "We're about to have company."

Vila glanced nervously into the gloom, then back at Avon, who seemed on the verge of shooting Vaylan anyhow. Then the gun made a savage gesture toward the ship, and he heard Avon snarl a single word.

"Move."

Vaylan complied, moving past Vila as though he weren't there at all. Avon followed the rebel up the incline, keeping the gun close, and Tarrant, still holding his shoulder, went after. The pilot turned back to give Vila an 'aren't you coming?' look from the hatch, and Vila could only stare at him numbly for a moment before something compelled him to turn away, to look at her for what was, at long last, to be the final time. He felt sick, but not even a little remorseful when he saw those eyes, still open and wide with surprise, staring back at him with imagined reproach. Vila's own eyes hardened, formulating as cold a return-glare as he could manage in the fleeting moment he had taken to look at the corpse. He presented his back to her then, and hurried up the gangway to the waiting safety of the ship.

 

*      *      *

The repressive quiet of his cabin did nothing at all to heighten Vila's mood as, slumped in a chair near the door, he eyed the untouched bottle of Gildaran wine beside him on the table. He had been watching the blank walls and empty corners of the room for the better part of four hours, silently pleading with Cally to come back again, to prove that she had been more than the alcohol-illusion he knew the others would claim her to be. If ever he told them.

Nothing had answered his pleas.

 _Mirage_ was a full day underway for Kidron with Vaylan locked in the security cell, Tarrant's flying skills and a substantial head start having long ago outmaneuvered the rebel ship's feeble attempt at pursuit. They had slowed only once since then, long enough to launch the life capsule containing Trienn's body into deep space, and then had resumed course full-throttle. Avon intended to lose no more time.

Pulling Orac's key from its customary pocket, Vila put that on the table, too, and wondered for the nth time if he might not be going quietly insane. After all, Avon had been hearing things for gods-knew how long, conversing with a Blake who wasn't there: perhaps the aberration was catching.

So was it better to be drunk or crazy?

"The least you could do," he said aloud to the empty room, "is prove that I'm neither. Cally?"

More than anything, he wanted her not to be the simple creation of a liquor bottle's whim; with those phantoms he had lived all his life, and not one had ever grown substantial enough to touch him. Cally had touched him, spoken to him, shaken him awake. Cally had been all too real.

Vila stood, searching the room again for shadows that refused to be there.

"Don't leave me alone now, Cally. I didn't know it was you, before. If I had... Please, Cally. Come back!"

She didn't answer. Despairing, Vila knew in that moment that she never would. He reached down to grasp the bottle, hefted it, let his left hand hover for a moment an inch from the sealing cork...

He drew the hand away. The brightly-colored label moved slightly from side to side as his right hand turned the bottle, but something was obscuring his vision, making the print impossible to read.

Vila hurled the bottle at the wall. It struck with the satisfying pop and jangle of shattering glass, and left behind a smear of pale red rivulets streaming busily toward the floor.

There was an immediate buzz and click from _Mirage's_ maintenance sensor, and the door concealing the service robots whisked open. Oblivious to the cabin's occupant, who had flung himself on the bed and pressed both hands to his ears, they glided out to attend to the mess, chortling electronic admonitions to each other all the while.

Vila never heard them.


	6. Chapter 6

_It shouldn't take this long to die._

_He could hear voices, boots scuffing the floor nearby. The alarms had gone silent, but the sanguine red of the emergency lighting still found its way through his closed eyelids. Death clung to the air; the scent of discharged pararifle energy and the stronger, more puissant odor of something else. His own pending death, perhaps._

_Why hadn't it come yet? The gunfire had ceased an eternity ago. Or perhaps it had only been minutes. Still, it had been too long._

_His chest was numb, devoid of any feeling at all. But he could feel something that lay awkwardly under his feet. No, not something. Someone._

_Blake._

_"Hants is dead, sir," one of the voices reported briskly. The response was a disinterested, guttural sound._

_"See about the rest of them, then."_

_Avon tried to draw in a breath; the effort brought a wave of pain and a half-strangled coughing spasm. His eyes flew open to the indistinct sight of two black-clad figures towering above him, blocking the harsh red light, paraguns held loosely at their sides._

_"Bastard's still alive," one of them mumbled from behind the anonymous shield of his helmet, and the other grunted and savagely worked the slide on his weapon._

_"Not for long he isn't."_

_The gun swung into firing position, aimed unerringly at his head._

_Avon waited, welcoming a quickened end to it, and felt cheated and angry when the trooper hesitated._

_//Shoot, damn you! Pull the trigger, and have done with it!//_

_Calmly, he watched the gloved hand flex once, the forefinger reaching through the metal guard to curl over the trigger and close..._

_"Garen!"_

_The authoritative voice Avon had heard earlier marched into the periphery of his vision in the person of a Federation Captain, and an arm shoved the paragun aside, aborting the shot._

_"What the hell do you think you're doing?"_

_"He..." Trooper Garen's voice broke, an oddly childish sound muffled by the concealing helmet. "He killed Hants."_

_"Disobey orders again and you'll get the same. You were told to fire warning shots. Warning, Garen."_

_"With your permission, sir," the other trooper said, "we did. But this one opened fire and... well, Hants returned fire before he went down, sir."_

_Disbelief tinged the reply. "Mm. And the same with all the others, I suppose. Well, the lot of you can tell the Commissioner your troubles; it's her plans you've cocked up and I don't imagine she'll exactly be thrilled with your handiwork."_

_The Commissioner...? Servalan. It had to be Servalan._

_The Captain's stern voice was barking orders now, but Avon could no longer distinguish the words. More black shapes gathered around him, faceless, indistinct. A booted foot caught him sharply in the ribs, wrenching a gasp from between clenched teeth. Then more gloved hands reached to seize his arms and haul him to his knees. Involuntarily, he cried out, falling to his knees as the numbness in his chest became lancing fire. He had a brief, dizzying vision of what had once been Gauda Prime's command center, its floor covered over with lifeless forms, some clad in black and others... Others..._

_The hands jerked him roughly to his feet, and the fire burned a path through lungs and throat and brain, until the world turned to searing white and there was nothing left to see or hear any longer._

_He didn't remember being carried from the room._

_There hadn't been anything more until SHE had awakened him. Then had come her threats and velvet promises, lies concealed within half-truths, cajoling, seducing, all the things at which she so excelled. And her ultimate cruelty had been to allow his escape, knowing he had nowhere left to run, no place that would shelter him, no one who would care._

_He'd gone to find Tav..._

"Avon?"

Cold stars stared back at him through _Mirage's_ observation window. The nearer suns receded into infinity, leaving illusory light trails behind. They carried away with them ill-favored memories of a place called Gauda Prime, a man named Blake, and a woman...

"Avon -- are you...? Well I know you're all right, but I mean, are you all right, if you know what I mean?"

He addressed the hazy reflection in the window. "What do you want, Vila?"

"Nothing, really. Just wondered if you were... you know."

"The state of my physical health is a matter of grave concern to you, suddenly, is that it?" He turned to confront the other man and found himself surprised at how changed Vila seemed. The thief's face was drawn and pale, his eyes hollow; the picture of too much wine and too little sleep. He hadn't seen Vila like that since... since just after Malodaar.

Malodaar and Gauda Prime. Both an eternal two years before.

"That's not what I meant," Vila said in abject tones, and there was a faint slurring of the consonants in his sentence. "I thought you might... I thought..."

He trailed off and sat down on one of the observation couches to cradle his head in his hands. "You're no easier to talk to than you ever were," he complained miserably.

"Talk? You're drunk, Vila. As I recall, your customary cure for that condition is sleep. In proliferate amounts."

"Not drunk." Vila's voice broke on the words, and Avon realized with some horror that the man was crying. He had only seen Vila reduced to tears once before, and alcohol had played no part in that instance at all. This...

"Vila..." He started forward, stopped himself, and feeling at a sudden unaccustomed loss for what to do with his hands, clamped them in front of him at chest level, unconscious tension compressed in fist over fist. No less helpless than he had ever been to deal with emotional displays, he stood awkwardly and waited, half wishing he could walk away and leave Vila to whatever demons had chased him here in the first place. But something wouldn't let him go.

Nothing occurred that seemed appropriate to say, either. So he listened to the ragged pattern of Vila's breathing until it had assumed more normal proportions. Regaining a modicum of control, the thief sat straighter on the couch, but he did not look up.

"She warned me," he said without preamble. "It was her."

Avon's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Who? Servalan?"

"No." Vila's voice broke again and he swallowed, fighting more tears. "Cally. It was Cally."

"Cally is dead, Vila."

"I know that! Don't you think I know that?" For the first time, the smaller man's eyes came up to meet his and Avon was startled to find a chillingly sober fury in their depths. "I'm not drunk and I'm not crazy, and I wasn't then, either. She was there."

"Where?"

"On Gildar. And here on the ship before that, only I didn't know it was her, then. She spoke to me, Avon. She touched me."

It was a statement nothing but cold logic could answer. "It had to be someone else, then," Avon said. "Someone who looked like Cally."

Vila shook his head in adamant denial. "She knew," he insisted. "Don't you see? She warned me they were coming after us, and no one on Gildar could have known that! I tell you it was Cally!"

"All right, Vila." Avon frowned, conceding the unlikely point rather than evoke another outburst. Two years ago he would have denied the merest suggestion of anything so ethereal as a ghost. Today...

"I didn't expect you'd believe me," the thief said miserably. "Who ever did? Even Cally..." The name caught in Vila's throat and for an embarrassing moment Avon was sure it was about to become a sob. One of his clenched hands unfolded, reached out of its own accord, and hovered for the briefest of moments over Vila's shoulder. A breath away from touching, it curled in upon itself and fell, soundless, to his side.

 _What do you want of me, Vila?_ he thought with bitter resignation. _Why come to me at all? I cannot offer comfort or companionship, not now, not ever. After the horrors of Malodaar, and Gauda Prime, what makes you continue to trust me? To stay with me at all?_ Eyes slitted, he looked down at Vila's abject form and wondered how, for so many years, he could have found the man uncomplicated, little more than a Delta with talents above his station. When truth presumed to breach Vila's own rather intricate defenses, it became clear that in fact, he was as complex in his way as Avon was in his, and certainly more than an ample match for Tarrant -- or, as he had just more than adequately proven, Servalan.

"Vila..."

The hand drifted hesitantly outward again, but recoiled in almost the same instant at the sound of _Mirage's_ alarm klaxon. Vila's head came up, his eyes now both fearful and questioning.

"What...?"

But Avon was already running for the corridor and the flight deck beyond.

 

*      *      *

Tarrant barely had time to notice Avon and Vila's arrival: he was too preoccupied with the effort to reclaim control of a flight console that had suddenly gone dead beneath his hands.

 _"Mirage,_ explain the alarm!" Avon's question was the same one Tarrant had voiced only moments before -- the central viewscreen and external sensors both failed to record anything more hostile than passing star systems in their vicinity. The ship's only response to Avon's demand, however, was to cancel the wailing alert signal, leaving the flight deck in sudden, eerie silence.

 _"Mirage,"_ Tarrant tried again, "respond please. Why the alarm, and why have you frozen the flight controls?"

No answer.

Tarrant caught a brief glimpse of Vila, wearing a curiously resigned expression, standing at the entryway. Then the viewscreen flickered and crackled with static, drawing his attention forward as the image of a man began to form there.

Avon's features hardened as the picture clarified, and Tarrant recognized _Mirage's_ auxiliary control room. The blond man with the smug expression sitting behind the control console, had, until now, been locked in the ship's security cell.

"Vaylan." Avon breathed the name through closed teeth, much as he had once pronounced Servalan's. "How the hell...?"

"I'm so glad to see you're all together," the man on the screen said, as though Avon had not spoken at all. "Togetherness is such a comforting thing in times like these. I'm sure you'll agree."

Before Tarrant could ask what in blazes this idiot was on about, the squeal of activating gears sounded from behind Vila. The thief started as a metal fire door sliced rapidly across the keyhole-shaped opening to seal itself firmly to the opposite side. They had only just reacted to that when a second, far more ominous sound came from the ship's overhead. It was scarcely more than a stilling of the air, a soft hiss, and then stillness once again. But Tarrant had a forbidding suspicion...

"What is he doing?" Avon queried tersely, though his tone indicated he knew as well as Tarrant did.

"What does it look like?" Vila's eyes were searching the overhead's perimeter. "He's turned off the oxygen supply."

Tarrant made a hasty check of the life support readings and shook his head grimly. "It's worse than that. He's reversed the flow. We'll be hermetically sealed in less than seven minutes."

Avon wheeled to confront the viewscreen, only to be met with Vaylan's fading after-image. Not surprising, Tarrant thought acridly. They had nothing at all to bargain with, and Vaylan hardly need be inclined to listen.

Avon's fist slammed down on the nearest console, a familiar gesture of frustration. "How the hell did he get out of that cell?"

"Does it matter?" Vila's meek voice put in.

"It was his ship," said Tarrant. "He obviously still has control codes we weren't aware of." Avon's inactivity irritated him suddenly and he snapped, "Well are you just going to stand there?!"

The tech spared him a brief scathing look before he turned and stalked toward the cobalt-colored panelling that housed the _Mirage_ computer. Lights still played up and down its surface in rapid patterns; proof that it still operated despite its refusal to answer them. Avon knelt, reached out for the access panel and tugged, frowning in puzzlement when it did not open.

"Auto-locking mechanism," Tarrant guessed. "He probably activated it at the same time he triggered everything else."

The word 'lock' prodded Vila from his unexplained apathy, and he shuffled over to inspect the panel, pulling tools from various pockets as he went.

"Remote-triggered magno-lock," he announced after tapping on the plex in several places. "It's all on the inside, but if I try the frequency modulator it might--"

"Never mind the postulations," Avon cut him off. "Just get it open!"

Vila nodded, producing more tools. "Give me five minutes."

"Do it in three." With a discreet glance at the overhead air vents, Avon came to his feet and paced back toward the viewscreen, where the moving stars prevailed once more. He passed the weapons rack on the way, drawing Tarrant's attention to the Federation paragun that stood among the others -- Trienn's gun.

"We could always try shooting our way out," he suggested, half-serious. He immediately wished he could take back the words. Avon's glare said all that Tarrant already knew: even if they'd had the time, the door sealing off the flight deck had been designed to withstand blaster fire.

Tarrant gave up and fell silent, concentrating instead on a futile effort to get something on the flight console to respond. Nothing did, but for a few moments it kept him from dwelling on the fact that the air around him had already grown painfully thin; breathing was becoming progressively more difficult. He felt an overwhelming urge to put his head down on the console and simply go to sleep. Fighting it off required a herculean determination to move, to stand, to do anything other than sit here. But his legs felt like neutronium, and his hands weren't even his own anymore. From what seemed a great distance, he heard Avon admonish Vila to get on with it, they were running out of time. Vila's three minutes had come and gone, and the panel wasn't open. If Avon couldn't bypass Vaylan's override before they all passed out...

"I've got it!"

Vila's triumphant cry came seconds before a light flash and an oddly muffled explosion threw him backward away from the computer. Smoke billowed from the panelling, although the access door, Tarrant noted, remained stubbornly shut. The pilot forced his way out of the flight chair, told his feet to move, to carry him in Vila's direction, but he found himself on hands and knees on the deck instead, fighting just to fill his lungs with air. Two tiers of the flight deck away, he could see Vila rolling away from the force of the blast, the front of his clothing black with scorch marks.

Booby trap, Tarrant thought groggily. There had been a charge hidden in the lock and Vila, in his haste, had failed to detect it.

He tried to crawl in Vila's direction, but finding even that impossible, collapsed where he was, and watched with bleary detachment as something else interposed itself in the interminable distance between himself and the injured thief. Avon, moving sluggishly but somehow, incredibly, still moving, had clawed ineffectually at the burned-but-intact lock before he turned away from it and stumbled toward the writhing figure on the deck nearby.

It had to be the effect of oxygen deprivation: Tarrant could have sworn, before the lancing pain in his lungs drove him all the way into unconsciousness, that he saw Avon -- cynical, self-motivated, uncaring Avon -- gather a trembling Vila into his arms and cradle him protectively against the smoldering bulkhead.

 

*      *      *

The unlikely tableau remained when Tarrant opened his eyes, but several other realizations distracted him from it: the fact that he was alive, to begin with, and breathing apparently fresh air, though his chest ached sharply with the exertion. He still lay where he had fallen on the deck, and found that he could move now -- but there was something else he'd been aware of from the start: there was no flight vibration in the deck, no whisper of far-away engines, and the gravity ratio had noticeably changed. _Mirage,_ wherever she was, was no longer spaceborne.

But if they were planetside and on one of Vaylan's bases, why hadn't he come to collect them? And why, for that matter, were they still alive at all?

In the process of finding his feet and then the flight console, Tarrant noted movement from across the deck. Avon's head lifted; dark eyes stared up at him, blinking in confusion. Vila lay motionless in his arms, and looked, Tarrant noted morbidly, as though he might very well be dead. Grimacing with the effort of regaining his chair, Tarrant forced himself not to think about that for the moment: Vila dead meant there was nothing he could do anyway, and just at the moment, Vila alive amounted to much the same thing. The vital question of the hour was how to get out of here.

#Tarrant?#

 _Mirage's_ querulous voice startled him; he'd only had time to discover that the controls were still useless, and he hadn't expected to hear the overridden computer's vocal circuits.

 _"Mirage,_ where are we?" His demand came out in a hoarse whisper, but the computer responded, as it always had, with solicitous affection.

#We are grounded in Omega sector, planet Kidron,# she announced in rapid succession. #I have reversed override commands to environmental control. This was necessary to prevent your expiration.#

Tarrant made a mental note never to argue again with the computer's pseudo-romantic notions. "Thank you," he said, and meant it. He was aware of Avon moving behind him, but didn't spare the time to look around. _"Mirage,_ can you open the blast door on the flight deck?"

#I have sustained circuitry damage,# she replied with a distinct air of sadness. #Bypass procedure will be complete in three point two minutes. It will then be essential that you vacate these premises at once: there are eight armed individuals en route to this ship with orders to clear the flight deck of all obstructions.#

Tarrant refrained from comment on what had to be Vaylan's wording. "Can you free the flight controls?"

#Flight control remains locked on remote activation.#

Tarrant scowled. "Meaning 'no.'" He pushed away from the console, intending to head for the weapons rack, and met Avon coming back from the starboard alcove, carrying an armload of emergency medical supplies. Tarrant changed directions to follow him back to Vila, and knelt beside him as Avon began applying a regenerating balm to the burns on the unconscious man's chest and hands. Vila's color was too pale, his breathing much too shallow, and Tarrant's tentative search for a pulse told him the heart rate was none too steady, either.

"He's not going to make it, Avon."

The other man ignored him to continue working in obdurate silence. Seeing nothing else to do, Tarrant rose and made haste to the weapons store, where he confirmed for himself that Trienn's gun still held a full charge. There was a second paragun, one he had taken from a dead guard on Dauban, but it was empty. He therefore selected two of the smaller handguns in the rack, clipped one to his own belt and carried the other back to Avon.

The tech accepted the weapon without comment, secreting it away in between ministrations to Vila. Hating himself for having to say it, Tarrant stole a nervous glance at the still-closed entryway and murmured, "Avon, we've got to leave him. He'll never make it as far as we've got to go, and if we try to take him, neither will we." He seized one of the rapidly-moving hands. "Avon..."

The algid fury in the other man's gaze warned him to subside in the same moment that _Mirage_ proclaimed curtly, #Flight deck access opening.#

With a reluctant hiss, the door receded into the bulkhead, leaving the keyhole entry exposed. Tarrant was there at once, paragun at the ready, but there were as yet none of Vaylan's troops on the other side of the door. The outer hatch stood open further on, the landing ramp down, and a vast expanse of landing field visible beyond. It was occupied by another vessel, one whose outlines Tarrant did not recognize, but she dwarfed _Mirage_ with the sheer bulk of her pitted, battle-scarred fuselage. An unmarked troop carrier, perhaps?

The scene was suspiciously devoid of activity; nothing moved at all other than a warm breeze wafting in the hatchway, and Tarrant thought the total silence more unnerving than he might have found entering a war zone. Why was it so quiet? And where were the eight armed troops _Mirage_ had warned him were on the way?

The unidentified ship sat alone out there on the tarmac, her afterburners venting billowing plumes of white exhaust. Tarrant didn't like the look of her. She seemed to be... waiting for something.

Avon had moved away from Vila again and was collecting small pieces of equipment from the supply alcove. _"Mirage,"_ he said, and his voice sounded oddly tight to Tarrant, "does the remote flight systems lock originate in auxiliary control, or is there an external influence?"

#Locking facility is now external to this ship.#

"Can you defeat it?"

#Rerouting of flight control systems will require one point nine-nine hours.#

"Do it, then. And initiate the following priority security program: all previous codes are to be erased forthwith. You will respond exclusively to the voiceprints of myself, Tarrant and Vila. No others. Is that understood?"

#New program accepted.#

 _Mirage_ fell silent, as though contemplating her instructions, and Tarrant chafed at the doorway. "Can we get the hell out of here now?"

Avon cast him an unreadable look, eyed the paragun pointedly, and then bent to gather Vila from the floor. Though he would have preferred having Avon's gun to back his own, Tarrant said nothing and accepted responsibility for covering their descent to the landing. Nothing and no one challenged them, but before they had reached the safety of the nearest building, a series of explosions shook the ground beneath their feet, and gunfire erupted from somewhere not very far away.

"Welcome back to the war," Tarrant breathed, and yanked open a door marked 'FLIGHT PERSONNEL ONLY.' He preceded Avon through the opening and a short distance down the deserted corridor before he noticed a red sign with an arrow extending from the wall just ahead. It proclaimed 'MEDICAL' in stark white letters.

"I think Vila may just be in luck," he said. Avon was already moving in the direction of the arrow; Tarrant had to rush to get ahead of him again. The man's reactions bothered him more than he liked to admit. Not that he minded the newfound revelation that Avon cared about something after all: it was this dogged determination to get Vila to safety at the risk of their own that was too unlike the Avon he remembered. And Vila might well die anyway. Left alone aboard _Mirage,_ even in the cryo unit, he would certainly have done, once Vaylan's people had arrived. If they had arrived. Where the hell were all of them, anyway?

The med section was as deserted as the rest of the base, though a new eruption of gunfire told them that someone was here, somewhere. Oblivious to the sounds of the battle, Avon carried Vila to the closest of the three couches, laid him down and began attaching the life support equipment. Tarrant stood guard at the door, watching an empty passageway while gunfire continued sporadically in the distance.

"They're not Federation guns," he observed, though he had the feeling he was talking to himself. "Unless Vaylan's valiant are fighting amongst themselves, that ship out there is a pirate -- which means the worst of the rabble are moving in to pick up the spoils."

If Avon heard, he did not respond. Having activated Vila's respirator, he was now unclipping three items from his belt: the gun, a communicator and a miniature directional locater, and was heading stolidly for the door.

"And where do you think you're going?" Tarrant's annoyance at being treated like a service robot came broiling to the surface, and he deliberately blocked Avon's way, despite an awareness that he could not physically restrain the man. Nor, however, did the answer he received do anything to alleviate the tension.

"Stay with Vila."

"I want to know where you're going, Avon."

The gun in Avon's hand came up, accompanied by a threatening tone he remembered only too well. "Stay here." Avon snarled the words, gesturing sharply with the gun. Tarrant moved unwillingly aside to let him pass, and when he had gone, moved back into the doorway to again guard both the empty hall and one Delta thief who would probably never be aware of the care than had just been lavished on him from one exceedingly unlikely source.

 

*      *      *

Liberator _sounded... well... wrong. It felt wrong, too, though he couldn't identify a reason._

 _Vila turned a juncture, drifting into yet another darkened, hexagonal corridor, and reached out to touch the familiar reflective striping of the walls. That felt wrong, too, not at all like_ Liberator _ought to, and why was it so stifling down here? Something was constricting his air passage, forcing up a fiery agony every time he tried to draw a breath; it made his eyes water with the effort to breathe at all. Where was everyone?_

_Blake? Jenna? Cally? Gan? Avon? All gone and left him behind?_

_"All but one, Vila."_

_Avon stood at the corridor's end, clothed in black that was still not as dark as his gaze, and there was a gun in his hand. A gun pointed at Vila._

There's only you to deal with now, _the spectre of Avon said, though its mouth didn't move._ Only one more 'friend' _(with the faintest pause on the word)_ to be dispensed with.

 _Vila didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the ludicrous image, for all that it evoked a memory of something he could not quite call to mind; some other closed, dark place where Avon had stalked him, and carried a gun. Vila had no wish to pursue the memory. So he turned and bolted down the passageway, running for all he was worth until_ Liberator _wasn't_ Liberator _at all anymore; there were rocks, dead grass, patches of snow beneath his boots, a sharp bite to the air and the acrid smell of smoke. The blackened splinters of a glass housing smoldered on the hilltop._

_Terminal._

_Terminal, where Cally had died and_ Liberator _had been lost. He could see four figures huddling round a fire in the gathering dark. Avon, bent over a broken Orac. Tarrant, flat on his back with a concerned Dayna at his side. And Vila himself sat alone and dejected, apart from the rest._

_He hadn't wanted them to see the tears._

Why do you cry for me, Vila?

_He started, twisting to see where the voice had come from. Cally stood behind him on the hillside, her hair and clothing unaffected by the chill wind, and she was smiling at him._

You needn't mourn for me, _she said._ Not now, not then _. She nodded to the morose group around the campfire._ On Auron, it was always known that death is not the end of life.

_"Cally, why did you...?" Vila's courage deserted him and took his words along with it. Infuriatingly, his voice caught, and he couldn't ask her why she'd left him alone, why she had warned him once and then not come again._

"Vila?"

_Someone else's voice had intruded then. He didn't recognize it until the mysterious obstruction was removed and he could breathe more easily. Then it was clearly Tarrant's voice, repeating his name._

_Tarrant?_

_But Tarrant was unconscious, over there on the ground, and the others were..._

_Where? Terminal no longer surrounded him. The frosty air was gone, replaced by a grey, soundless nothing, and Cally... Cally was there, reaching out to him. But she was fading even as he watched, blending into the nothing, becoming the same hue of colorless grey._

_"No!" He tried to run after her, but his feet had grown impossibly heavy and refused to move. "Cally, don't go! Please, Cally!"_

_There were hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently._ "Vila, can you hear me?"

_"No... no, don't!"_

_He saw a shadow move against the grey, a black shape with a gun in its phantom hand._

Only one more friend, _it said,_ to be dispensed with _._

_One dark hand came up to clutch him, the other pressing the gun to his head. Vila fought to back away, and couldn't._

_"Don't," he begged. "Avon, please don't--"_

"Vila, wake up. It's Tarrant. Can you hear me, Vila?"

Tarrant. Tarrant could help him, if he would; Tarrant could stop Avon.

"Don't let him," he pleaded with the unseen pilot. "Help me..."

"No one is going to hurt you," Tarrant's voice said. "Even the computer says you're out of danger. It's all right, Vila."

But he was wrong. It wasn't all right, it wasn't all right at all -- because the shadow was still out there, waiting, and it wanted to kill him.

Vila coughed, and immediately the pain in his chest returned with a vengeance. Tears formed in his eyes, forcing him to blink, and in a moment, when he had forcibly quelled the cough, he saw the ceiling of an unfamiliar room, flashing banks of medical equipment -- and the puzzled face of Del Tarrant.

"You were dreaming," the pilot said awkwardly, and tried to smile. He didn't quite succeed.

The staccato echo of gunshots came from somewhere, and Vila realized with a start that they were not aboard _Mirage._

"Where...?"

"We're on Kidron. Vaylan's base, only it's under attack and I think most of the rebels have evacuated. Avon's gone, after Orac I expect."

Vila shuddered, reminded of the shadow, and squeezed his eyes shut once again. "Please don't let him," he said weakly.

Tarrant's voice came from above him, strong and confident. "Don't let him what? What are you talking about?"

No, of course it wouldn't make sense to Tarrant. He'd never known about Malodaar, had never seen the Avon-shadow. Or Cally... Dream and reality colliding, Vila tried to turn over in the bed, alarmed when he found that he couldn't: his arms were secured to the couch by restraints, and his hands were heavily bandaged. Oh gods, his hands. Avon hardly need bother to kill him; he would be useless anyway. To be rid of him now, all Avon had to do was...

"Don't let him," Vila repeated in desperation, and forgetting that his hands were immobilized, tried to reach out for Tarrant. "I don't want to die here. Please."

A confused Tarrant shook his head in denial. "You're not dying," he affirmed, and glanced aside at the diagnostic indicators as if to reassure himself. "It was touch and go for a while, but you're stable now."

Vila's terror made words near-impossible, but he had to say it, had to somehow gain Tarrant's support -- and protection.

"Avon..." The name wanted to wedge in his throat. "Avon will try to leave me here. I don't want to die that way... not left behind like that... Don't let him leave me here."

He saw dismay on the pilot's face, followed closely by something that looked very much like guilt. Then the younger man turned away slightly and said, "He won't, Vila." He got up and paced away across the room, long legs carrying him to the far wall in just a few strides. "Believe me, he won't."

Taking that as a promise, Vila relaxed against the sweat-damp pillow and let his eyelids grow heavy again. The ache in his lungs still made breathing difficult; his hands were hurting now as well, and he was suddenly very, very sleepy...

 

*      *      *

Avon found the central control room of the complex without difficulty. _Mirage's_ trace on the carrier wave had led him here with the directional finder and with instructions broadcast to him over the communicator. He'd waited outside the door for some time, listening to voices that he finally determined were of electronic origin. He went in gun-first just the same, but found no one inside.

The room's front wall was formed by a gridded tracking screen, mapping the area of space above them, though the only ships visible there were nearly off the grid. Vaylan's fleet, no doubt, escaping yet another invasion -- except that this one had not been of Federation design. It must be expensive, conquering Federation outposts only to abandon them again at the first sign of trouble. He wondered if Vaylan had had time to turn tail and run with them.

The thought dissolved as he found the source of the babble he had heard from outside: a newscast was chattering excitedly to itself on monitor screens all around the control center. As he approached one of them, he saw a flash of Earth Residence One -- the house Servalan had constructed on her ascension to the Presidency. The house where Anna had died. The shot promptly changed to an interior view, the President's executive office, and Avon immediately recognized Carnell surrounded by a squadron of Vaylan's rabble. The man's usually-dazzling smile was visibly daunted: he was signing something and handing it reluctantly back to a severe-looking woman among the rebel contingent.

"These scenes of the official resignation were taken late yesterday," the reporter's rapid-fire voice-over exclaimed. "And among the documents signed by the retiring President Falco were those legally dissolving the Terran Federation as a governing body in any sector of the galaxy." The scene changed again, this time to an innocuous corridor and two rebel guards on either side of an open door. "Less than two hours after his resignation," the reporter went on breathlessly, "ex-President Falco, who was to be held for trial, somehow disappeared from this guarded room on an upper floor of the residence. Search parties have thus far failed to locate the dethroned President, but rebel forces are confident that he will be unable to escape the palace compound. Celebrations of the Rebellion's victory have meanwhile drawn thousands to--"

Avon found the broadcast's control switch and flipped it to 'off.' The screens died instantaneously, plunging the room into contrasting silence.

So Vaylan's troops hadn't necessarily run from the mysterious invaders after all. More likely, they were on their way to join the victory party on Earth, then. Over one night, Blake's dream had come true. There was no longer a Federation. Avon wondered idly if the man would have approved of the people who were fulfilling his legacy. People like Par Vaylan.

Somehow, he doubted it.

Scanning the large circular room at length, Avon's gaze fell to the control banks left of the tracking screen. There, amid a clutter of dysfunctional circuit boards and wiring, acquiring its own matching patina of dust, sat a familiar rectangular shape.

"Orac!"

He hurried to it, using the tip of the gun to clear debris from its top, relieved to find that none of the discarded circuitry was Orac's own. His left hand slid into his pocket to close around the key he had taken from Vila before leaving the medical section. After the briefest of hesitations, he pulled it out, and brushing dust from the activation slot, slapped it home with a flourish.

Orac sputtered to life with a decidedly anemic whine and said raspily, *Where have you been??! My casing and circuitry are inexcusably dirty and will require immediate maintenance if I am to function at peak levels of effic--*

"Shut up and listen," Avon interrupted, though he'd never thought he would actually be glad to hear the computer's habitual complaining again. "Do you know where Par Vaylan is?"

*No,* Orac shot back petulantly. *Nor do I care. I am not a personnel roster. Furthermore, I must protest the lengthy period of time in which I have been--*

"Then tell me about the invading forces," Avon cut it off again. "Who are they?"

Orac's lights flashed dully for a moment before it answered. *The ship's computer registry lists it as the privateer _Croesus._ Crew complement is one-hundred-seventy-five. That is the only information I have obtained thus far.*

"Then obtain more. I want to know who and what--"

"Perhaps I might be of help."

Avon spun with the weapon ready -- and found Vaylan framed in the doorway, hands held outward in cautionary surrender.

"I'm not armed," he averred, and when Avon showed no indication of relinquishing the gun, he moved into the room with an expansive shrug that raised his hands still higher. "But I'm afraid that _they_ are."

Someone moved into the doorway behind him, a woman in dark blue fatigues with an assault rifle tucked all-too-comfortably under her arm. The snick of doors opening at several other points around the room was closely followed by the intrusion of at least a dozen other figures, most of them women as well, all similarly outfitted and armed.

Avon kept his own gun targeted dead center of Vaylan's chest.

"I have two debts to settle with you," he said tightly, ignoring the newcomers for the moment. "That's twice now you've attempted to kill me. I should like to return the favor -- albeit, more successfully."

Vaylan paled ever-so-slightly, then opted for a characteristic bluff. "Go ahead. Won't stop them killing you, I'm not sorry to say."

Avon's teeth made a brief appearance before he drawled, "Well now, that might just be worth the investment."

"It might." One of the women, a stocky brunette with another assault rifle, closed in on Avon with her armed cohorts on either side. "But we have orders to bring both of you back to _Croesus_ alive. Put down the gun."

Avon considered refusing, weighed the worth and the consequences, and then with a grimace, surrendered the pistol. One of the men in the assault force took the weapon, nodded toward Avon and said to the woman, "You sure he's the one?"

She smirked, an expression that made her hard features still less attractive. "Oh, it's him all right. Doesn't look much like the wanted-holos, maybe, but the Captain saw him on the monitors, and she was sure."

The man looked Avon over, smirking in his own stead. "What's she want with him anyway? Doesn't look like much to me."

Avon couldn't restrain the question. "She?"

They ignored him.

"Hell if I know why she wants him. Just do as you're told." The brunette turned and started barking orders, gesturing at Vaylan with her gun. "Take this one aboard and put him in a cell. Gibbon, Boles, you two rendezvous with Fourth Division and tell the Captain we're taking her 'catch' to the flight deck. Carnes, you take three others and finish searching for the rest of his crew. And Dekker," she turned to the man who had spoken earlier. "Bring that thing." She pointed at Orac with her chin; the small computer continued to hum irritatedly in the corner, as though it disapproved of the proceedings.

"What is it?" Dekker demanded in cautionary tones.

"How would I know? He was talking to it and I heard it answer him. Just bring it."

She left a disgruntled Dekker to the task and brought the muzzle of her rifle up to swing toward the door. Vaylan and his escorts had just vanished through it.

"Let's go," she said to Avon.

He regarded her with disdain for a moment, deliberately hesitating. Dekker hefted a buzzing Orac and marched out ahead of them. Then, as though complying were entirely his own idea and not her command at all, Avon wheeled and followed.

They headed down a side corridor he did not recognize, and along the way passed a rather grisly array of eight corpses; men still clutching their weapons, the shock of death staring, ill-disguised, from sightless eyes. They lay variously sprawled on the polished tile flooring, or propped in ungainly poses against the walls where they had fallen. And died.

 _Mirage's_ warning that Vaylan had dispatched an armed party of eight to 'clear the flight deck' teased at Avon's memory as he was marched past the gruesome scene, but he refrained from comment.

The thought fled altogether when, in the next moment, they emerged into the waning sunlight of the airfield.

Two ships occupied the tarmac.

Neither was _Mirage._

The imposing bulk of the _Croesus_ towered in the foreground. Where _Mirage_ had rested, however, sat a tiny, rusting cargo transport, its squat hull perched on sagging metal legs that screamed imminent collapse. Avon did an involuntary double-take, automatically searching beyond the two ships for the one that ought to be there -- and yet was not.

The smile nearly escaped before he thought to hide it.

His escorts, fortunately, had not noticed his reaction. They strode on toward _Croesus_ as though nothing were amiss, as though the sorry little cargo ship had been there all along.

As indeed, it had.

In their haste to get Vila to cover, Avon mused, neither he nor Tarrant had bothered to look back at the ship from which they had come. And whether by its own volition or Vaylan's, _Mirage,_ worthy of its name, had adopted camouflage. Until now, Avon hadn't realized how effective -- and how thorough -- her defensive cloaking could be. Nor had he known her to be capable of deceiving human eyes as easily as she beguiled those of electronic origin.

There was a great deal about _Mirage_ he would still have to learn.

If ever he saw her again...

"Inside!"

The assault rifle prodded him rudely out of his reverie, prompting Avon to give serious consideration to the strangulation of its owner. Were it not for the fact that she held a ready finger on the weapon's trigger...

That was not the only thing giving him pause. He admitted to more than a little curiosity about this captain. Someone, they had said, who saw him on the monitors and recognized him. Someone who was certain she knew him despite his dissimilarity to the old wanted holos, despite the reports that Kerr Avon had died on Sekros some weeks ago, despite various other evidence to the contrary.

In all his life, precious few had known Kerr Avon that well. And he had thought all of them either dead or accounted for.

At the rifle's insistence, he strode up the ramp and through _Croesus'_ main hatch. She was as dark a ship inside as out. Laser scars marred her bulkheads at several points along the accessway; peeling paint and broken cables hung batlike from the overheads. The air carried a taint of rust and old oil, overlaid by a peculiar, heady scent Avon recognized as cylotane -- the germicidal chemical many old air recycling systems had utilized to combat bacteria breeding in their oxygen-mixtures.

"Not that way. Move."

He realized he had stopped walking only when the woman's martinet command echoed near his ear and he was shoved in another direction, down a corridor bustling with returning 'troops' (if that was indeed what they were), toward a round door painted a garish shade of red. Or it had been, once.

Most of the traffic had turned into side corridors by the time Avon reached the door, which irised open with a slight wheeze to reveal the flight deck.

'Command center' would perhaps be the more accurate term. He stepped into a red-lit room of indeterminate size, with scaffolded galleries rising into seeming infinity on either side. The galleries were manned by shadowy figures bent over squawking instruments and consoles. Catwalks between the various levels were alive with activity as well: people in the same blue coveralls Avon's 'escorts' had worn moved back and forth with a decided sense of preparation. For what, he wondered?

"Hold there."

This woman's conversational abilities were beginning to grate on his nerves. Avon treated her to a Pleistocene glare, which she ignored, and halted beside a bank of flashing monitor screens. A cluster of blue uniforms, dyed mauve in the harsh illumination, stood with their backs to him, studying readouts on yet another console. They turned as a unit when his 'keeper' said, "This is the one you wanted, Captain."

"Thank you, Ries. Stand by."

Until she had spoken, Avon had utterly failed to recognize her. The hair was styled short and close, the face still coldly beautiful, yet somehow almost alien in the blood-colored light. Only the voice, diamond hard and self-assured as ever, still brought to mind the woman he had once known as Jenna Stannis.

They regarded each other in strained silence until she said, "I'd hoped the viscasts were telling the truth when they said you were dead. I suppose I should have known better."

He answered her with a look both knowing and querulous, but anything he might have said was pre-empted by the arrival of another uniformed subordinate, a man who handed Jenna a clipboard and cast Avon a sidelong glance as he reported curtly, "Divisions one through five aboard and accounted for. Carnes and three others are still on search detail."

Jenna studied the board fleetingly, then lay it aside. "Searching for what?"

Ries moved slightly behind Avon, raising the tip of the rifle. "The rest of this one's crew," she said.

"Ah." The captain of the _Croesus_ tossed her head back and propped one hand on her hip, addressing Avon directly once again. "And how many were there... in your 'crew,' Avon?"

He allowed the smile out, tightly controlled but effective. "Well now, that rather depends upon who is asking. And why."

"Stannis," one of the crew said from behind her, and Avon's eyes widened at the name as the man continued. "All holds secured for cargo; flight window in twelve point four-four minutes."

"Right." She turned back to the first man. "Recall the search party, Dylan. It's time to get out of here."

With a sharp nod, he disappeared again into the general confusion.

Jenna strode to the bank of monitors where Avon stood, touched a control and brought the image of the sagging cargo transport onto a primary screen.

"You really are coming down in the world, travelling anywhere in that. I'm surprised you ever achieved orbit."

"We managed."

"She's better than she looks, is that it?"

"You might say that." The answer was as deadpan as he could make it. Jenna seemed not to notice.

"Well whoever was with you, they won't be coming after us." Without explaining that, she shot another question at Ries. "You've got the ransom demand ready to transmit?"

"We've got it."

"Good."

Avon's eyes narrowed. This was all moving too rapidly, with too many unexplained factors. "Ransom?" he echoed, and caught Jenna's eyes again.

"Yes. For your friend in the cell block. Vaylan, isn't it?"

"He's hardly--"

"A friend, yes. Sorry, I'd forgotten; he'd not likely be alive if he were." Avon only half-managed to conceal a flinch at that. She went on without pausing. "But he has plenty of friends on Earth who'll pay to get him back all right. And they'll pay quite a lot, by the look of it."

He glanced around the control center at length before he said, "You've done rather well for yourself, I see."

"I've stayed alive."

"By picking up the pieces after other people's wars?"

"Any way I could. I never claimed to be particular." Her gaze hardened, centering on him. "Or altruistic, either. When I saw you on that monitor, I came damn close to ordering you shot on sight."

He feigned unconcern. "But you didn't."

"No, I didn't." Her smile was more akin to a smirk. "The Federation were still likely to pay a reward for you then, provided I could prove you were alive after all. Now there's no Federation to pay anything..." She left the threat implicit, letting him wonder.

"And no tedious qualms," he breathed, "about playing both sides against the middle."

"Not a one." She swept a hand at the screens depicting _Croesus'_ cargo holds, most of which appeared full. "That's how well we've done for ourselves. Booty from a hundred ships, a hundred planets, sold back to the highest bidder with no questions asked. It's a business I know how to run."

"So I see."

His disapproval was more obvious than he'd intended; he saw anger flash in her eyes at his tone. "Someone I knew once," she said, "used to tell me he found the idea of being wealthy rather appealing. In fact, he called it 'the only reality.'"

"'Someone you knew once' must have been a very cynical man."

"Oh, he was."

Dylan spoke again from the nearby console. "Ready on minimum power," he announced.

Jenna's gaze went back to the screen with _Mirage's_ camouflaged image. "One burst, three seconds," she said, and in the same moment, Avon started forward to protest, only to be halted by the barrel of Ries' gun pressed firmly against his spine.

He heard a sharp power hum. On the screen, a halo of brilliant blue flashed over the tiny ship for a split second -- and then exploded into one brief, blinding fireball.

Jenna cut the screen signal as the smoke cleared from a now-empty landing field. Her expression held both wariness and warning. "We're better than we look, too," she said, and with a wave to Ries, she headed back to the forward consoles. "Put him in the cell block and report back to your launch position. We have lift-off in six minutes."

"Right."

Avon scarcely heard Ries' acknowledgment; he was staring at the blank screen with a sense of loss he had not felt since _Liberator's_ 'death' in orbit over Terminal. Useless, of course, to form attachments to such things as ships, computers... They betrayed you less often than people, but they were just as easily lost. As easily destroyed.

"Let's go."

Ries jerked the rifle in the direction of the door. Avon didn't move for a prolonged moment, watching Jenna, her back to him now, bent to the task of launch preparations.

 _Wealth is the only reality,_ came the long-ago echo, and though the words were his own, the voice that whispered them belonged to Blake. _And the only way to obtain wealth is to take it away from somebody else._

With all the contempt he could rally, Avon shoved the rifle's barrel aside and preceded a scowling Ries to the door.

 _What's the matter, Avon?_ Blake's patronizing tones inquired as the door spiraled open. _Is it disturbing, seeing another's practice of your own philosophy?_

His own philosophy. His own reality. Or at least he'd thought them to be, once.

Kerr Avon walked on through the ship's crowded corridors without seeing them at all. To Blake's spectral accusation, he offered no defense.

There wasn't really any point.

 

*      *      *

Vila hadn't stirred in over an hour -- and Avon had been gone too long.

Tarrant hovered near the open door of the medical unit, torn between duty and necessity. No further sounds of battle, no signs of life out there at all. The base was quiet as a proverbial tomb. And no Avon.

It had been too long.

"Vila..."

Tarrant paced back to the bed, released the restraining bands and put a light hand to the thief's shoulder. Vila's eyes fluttered open at once, fever-bright but aware, and fastened on him with an intensity Tarrant found more than a little disturbing.

"I have to go," he blurted, and when the brown eyes filled with fearful understanding, Tarrant damned himself for a fool. "Avon is--" he began.

"Go on then." Vila's voice broke, but his words were forceful and taut with resentment. "What are you waiting around for, anyway?"

"That's not what I--"

But Vila had turned away in denial, drawing his bandaged hands to his chest as he curled onto his side. Never one for bedside manners, Tarrant felt his patience dissolve completely.

"Oh hell, will you listen to--"

From somewhere outside the complex came the abrupt whine of a plasma blast; a single, short burst followed again by eerie silence.

Tarrant bolted for the door. "I'll be back," he said, but Vila lay still and gave no indication that he'd even heard. Paragun firmly in hand, Tarrant swept out the door and charged down an empty corridor toward the air field -- toward the new sound that had begun to rumble through the flooring underfoot; the roar of a ship's thrust engines.

Launch warning lights flashed red-and-white patterns over the exit, which sealed automatically even as he reached it. Tarrant could do nothing but watch as steam jets obscured the view through the door's double glass, joined minutes later by clouds of exhaust backwash from the troop freighter's lift-off. The ship was well away before the seal retracted, cancelling the warning lights, and he could once again see the landing field.

The empty landing field.

Swearing, he kicked at the release bar, letting the door swing all the way out before he stepped through it, gun first.

Sunset dyed the field deep amber, but even in the failing light, he could see that _Mirage_ was gone. Not launched: only one ship had lifted off, and he was sure it had been the pirate. Just as he was sure, now, with a sickened confidence, exactly what the single plasma burst had signified.

He didn't know how long he'd remained there, feeling lost and staring at absolutely nothing, before it occurred to him to wonder if Avon might still be somewhere on the base.

He took a different hallway back, searching room after deserted room, finding nothing and no one, though there were signs of both looting and general ransacking throughout. The third corridor he tried yielded the startling sight of eight armed corpses littering the floor. They were the only casualties he'd come across, and their number did not escape Tarrant's notice. They'd probably been on their way to board _Mirage_ when they'd run head-on into the pirate assault force and unwisely decided to shoot it out. In the meantime, it appeared, their compatriots had all abandoned them.

And Vaylan? Tarrant examined the eight faces with practiced detachment, looking for the rebel leader. Not among the dead. So, perhaps he was still here as well. Somewhere.

Five empty rooms later, he found the tracking gallery, replete with lighted wall grid and its flashing echo of the pirate freighter breaking orbit. Moving slowly past the humming banks of equipment, Tarrant arrived at the communications consoles, which he studied at length before coming to a decision.

"Why not?" he said aloud, and tucking the paragun carefully under one arm, he reached to open the base-wide comm circuit.

"Avon." The name echoed overhead and out the open door, reverberating down the corridors. "Avon, are you there? I'm in the tracking gallery; if you can hear me, please respond."

His amplified voice ricocheted away, dissipating into nothing.

Scowling, he tried again. "Vaylan? Is anyone there?"

The question repeated itself to the uncaring walls. Nothing answered.

Defeated, Tarrant dropped into a chair. The paragun fell with a disgusted clatter to the console. He glared at the instruments in front of him; frequency modulators, signal enhancers, satellite relays. None of it of any help unless he could find a way to coax it into locating a ship for him. And there were none on the base, according to the grids.

Then again, it was a fairly large planet...

The faint noise sent his hand flying to the gun by reflex: he checked the reaction only when he'd swung around -- and found a wan, unsteady Vila looking back at him from the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing out of bed?" he demanded crossly. "I might have blown your head off."

Vila leaned, propped back-first to the door frame, and said in a pained voice, "Didn't answer you, did he?"

Tarrant glowered at the console again, an act Vila apparently took for adequate reply.

"Thought not."

"He could be anywhere," Tarrant said hotly, determined to deny what seemed more and more evident. "He could be dead, for all I know."

"Or out there." Vila eyed the departing blip on the wall grid.

"He wouldn't do that." Tarrant shot to his feet to storm around the comm station. "Not willingly." At any other time, he might never have believed that he, of all people, could defend Avon. But damn it, he had seen the man insist on saving Vila's life despite the danger to his own: that Avon should suddenly acquire a conscience he found shocking enough. But to acquire it only to end up abandoning both his shipmates... It didn't make sense. Not the way Vila wanted it to, anyway.

Tarrant's angry stalk came to a sudden halt in front of a workbench, one that hadn't been used much by the look of it. It was the dust, in fact, that had arrested his attention. A surrounding layer of grey defined a perfect black rectangle on the countertop: one that was precisely the correct dimensions for...

"Orac." Vila's voice at his shoulder made Tarrant start. "Or it used to be."

"Or something roughly the same shape. It doesn't prove a thing."

Vila swayed, prompting Tarrant to catch him by both shoulders. "For God's sake, man, sit down before you fall down. Regen healers can only do so much -- the rest takes time."

The thief slid unprotesting into a chair, but went on as though Tarrant hadn't spoken of his injuries at all. "Don't need to prove anything," he murmured. "He has a ship, he has Orac. What's he need with us, then?"

"It doesn't follow, Vila. Avon, hand Orac over to a pirate and then just fly away with him, friendly as you please? It would never happen."

Vila's look said otherwise as he rubbed absently at his gauze-taped hands. "So what do we care, anyway? We don't need him or old Plastic-mouth either one. We can go our own way now, take _Mirage_ and just get out of here."

Tarrant sat down again. "I'm afraid it's not that easy, Vila..."

 

*      *      *

Jenna Stannis deliberately strapped on a side-arm before entering the cellblock. _Croesus_ was two days out en route to Earth, and the ransom demand for Vaylan had been answered with the promise of a handsome sum -- provided the news services were not permitted access to the story. It wouldn't do to have it known that the leader of the Glorious Revolution and new President of the People's Galactic Republic had been kidnapped on the eve of his victory over the Federation.

Jenna smiled.

The former Federation.

What wouldn't Blake have given, while he lived, to hear that phrase? A great deal, though the man's own ingenuous nature had never allowed him to think beyond the Federation's overthrow. Had it not been for that naiveté, she might have found more of a confidant in Blake; a friend, perhaps even a lover, time and circumstances permitting. Neither had, though, and thanks to Avon, never would.

Her smile dissipating with that thought, she drew the gun in one sharp, efficient motion, and bypassing the room that held Par Vaylan, palmed the locking disk on Avon's cell.

She saw the dark head come up at the sound of the door. Seated on the cot's edge, he took in the gun at a bored glance before his gaze fell back to his interlocked hands. He said nothing, and the disinterest puzzled Jenna. Did he believe she wouldn't kill him, or was it simply that he didn't care? Neither contingency fit the man she remembered.

"I've been deciding what to do with you," she said bluntly, and let the gun rest loosely in her hand, ever-present but less threatening. Avon gave no indication of having noticed. "I'd like the answers to some questions, first."

She'd worded that badly and knew it. The eyes that came slowly up to meet hers, chillingly defiant, challenged her to make him answer anything at all -- or to pull the trigger and have done with it.

Cursing to herself, Jenna plunged on anyway. "Is it true?" she demanded. "Did you kill him?"

She saw Avon tense at the first question. His gaze darted to the far wall and fastened there, on nothing. For the longest time, she was sure he wasn't going to respond at all -- then he rose stiffly and moved across the cell to address that same wall.

"Blake is dead. It no longer matters how--"

"It matters," she cut him off. "To some of us." Relentless, she pressed the question. "Did you kill him?"

His face, when he half-turned to look at her, answered the accusation beyond any doubt. If there was any regret there at all, Jenna failed to find it.

"Why?" She'd never truly believed those reports -- until now. It was not an easy acceptance. "I want to know why."

For just a moment, she thought she saw something akin to anguish cross his face. But it was gone again too quickly for her to assess.

"The condemned," he breathed, "offers no defense. Why don't you just get on with it?"

Jenna found this weary acceptance unsettling. The Avon of _Liberator's_ crew had valued self-preservation above anything else: this, by contrast, was a man whom most of the known galaxy had been trying to kill for so many years that the threat had long ago lost its novelty.

"Damn it, Avon--"

She stopped, curbed her temper, demanded another answer she probably wouldn't receive. "Who else is there? The viscasts claimed you'd all been killed, but a year later they were back offering a reward for you. Who else survived?"

As ever, Avon's look said more than his words. At the moment, it wondered plainly why she cared.

"Call it curiosity," she told him honestly. "For old times' sake. Who else?"

"No one." He said it so quickly that she was confident it could not be the truth. And she knew he hadn't arrived on that base alone...

"Someone was with you on Kidron. When I've finished my business with Vaylan's friends, just maybe I'll send someone back to find out who it was."

He said nothing, and his expression this time was closed and unforthcoming, completely unreadable.

Someone moved in the open doorway: Jenna recognized Ries, assault rifle still in hand, hovering expectantly in the corridor. She stepped to the door to meet the woman, though she never turned her back on Avon.

"What is it?"

Dour-faced, Ries handed her a computer read-out. "Vaylan's new government isn't wasting any time. They issued that on general frequencies this morning. The viscasts are already broadcasting holos to match."

Jenna scanned the print-out with pragmatic calm: it was a list of 'criminals wanted for capital offenses against the Republic,' and for whom generous rewards would be offered to anyone who should bring the miscreants to justice. It was topped by a five-million-credit bounty on former Federation President Falco. Prominently etched below that worthy title was the name Kerr Avon and the tidy sum of four million credits. Del Tarrant and Vila Restal came seventh and eighth, below several names she did not recognize. Her own fell low on the list, but still carried the old Federation price tag of one million: a prize tempting enough to any bounty hunter with the nerve to try collecting it. Something in the neighborhood of twenty had done just that over the years. Jenna did not regret that none of them had survived to boast of the effort. She was a little disappointed, though, that ransoming the new President in the hour of his triumph hadn't moved her higher in the criminal ranks, secrecy notwithstanding. But then, perhaps the wheels of this new 'Democracy' moved just as slowly, in some respects, as the Federation's had.

She handed the paper back to Ries with a wry smile. "I suppose I should be honored, having my name on the Republic's most-wanted list in such distinguished company." To Avon, she added, "You've come second this time round, under Falco. Not to worry, though. They've added a magnanimous bonus to the price on your head. I can't imagine where they've got all this newfound wealth from, can you?"

Avon stared bleakly at the paper in Ries' hand and did not respond to Jenna's sarcasm. Ries crumpled the report in one gloved fist, tossing her head at Avon as she spoke. "So we turn this one in at the same time we collect for Vaylan. Double return."

Jenna slipped her handgun back into its holster, buying time to deliberate by fastening the safety strap. Avon had turned his head to look at her, but the eyes were flat, impassive.

"No," she said finally, and held up a hand to forestall Ries' protest. "I have other... uses... for this one. And Ries--"

The stocky woman turned back, disapproval rife in her expression. "Yes?"

"As far as the rest of the crew are concerned, his name is... Kerron. Dev Kerron. And he isn't on that list at all. Clear?"

For a moment, the disapproval became naked hostility. Then Ries masked her reaction with a succinct, "Clear, Captain," turned on her heel and left. Jenna didn't watch her go; her eyes were on Avon again, waiting for a question that didn't come.

"Don't you want to know why I did that?"

The response was as flat as his facial expression. "Am I supposed to be overwhelmed with gratitude?"

"No. Curiosity, perhaps, but never gratitude. Not you." She walked across the cell, keeping her stance relaxed, her tone capitulating. "We can help each other, you and I."

His brows went up at that, the closest thing to surprise Avon ever registered. Jenna hesitated, certain that what she was about to propose was mad, even more so in light of the fact that this was not the Avon she had known. This man had lost two... no, three ships, and their crews. And he had killed Blake. If any one thing remained the same, it was that he could not be trusted, not then, not now. So he would bear watching, provided he agreed to her demands. Well, she was used to that. Most of her crew bore watching.

"I have a base," she told him, "on a planet the Federation never touched, and the Republic's never heard of. It's a place a wanted man can live his life out, if he wants to, without looking over his shoulder. Nearly everyone there is on a wanted list somewhere. Safety and protection, for as long as you want it."

"In return for...?"

Jenna straightened. "I have the base, the personnel, the ship. And now I have Orac as well. That alone is enough to secure our safety from just about any threat. What I don't have is an easy way into the vaults and the cargo holds; a way around dockings, shuttles, surface landings..."

"The teleport."

"Together, you and Orac could rebuild it. Or do I overestimate your capabilities?"

He didn't answer that, but his countering question surprised her. "Is protection all you have to offer?"

Jenna scowled. "Isn't that enough?"

"Perhaps not." There was a little of the avaricious Avon she remembered in that tone.

"Well it's all I'm paying, for the moment," she said, and headed for the door. "Think it over. When I'm finished with President Vaylan over there, I'll be back."

A bit annoyed, though hardly surprised, Jenna left him to consider the proposal, secured the cell's lock and headed down the corridor.

She had business to conduct with the 'passenger' next door.

 

*      *      *

Bored, Vila sat and watched Tarrant work at the communications station.

It had been two days, and he hadn't located so much as a flyer. At the moment, the pilot was occupied with what Vila frankly considered a futile effort: attracting the attention of some passing ship with a distress signal. Dangerous to begin with, but then again, maybe not. No one was out there to see it, after all.

"Damn." He heard Tarrant mutter the oath as yet another attempt to contact some operating ground facility failed him.

Maybe there wasn't anybody down on the surface of this worthless planet, either.

Vila pulled himself out of the chair and ambled to the comm board, conscious of the tightness that lingered in his chest, and of the stiffening ache in his fingers. He'd removed the bandages this morning to find that the regen healer had done its job, at least cosmetically. There wasn't any way to know how long it would be before he regained full use of his hands.

Or if he would at all.

Tarrant ignored him until he gestured at the sensor grid under the younger man's nose. "I thought you said there was a city less than twenty miles away."

"There is. They're not answering messages without a recognition code, and neither is anyone else on the planet. Martial law's been declared in most of the communities. From the look of it, Kidron doesn't know the war is over."

Vila squinted at the blinking lights. "Meaning...?"

"Well the local broadcasts are sporadic, but there are reports of skirmishes in all the major population centers. The Federation may have fallen, but it still has a number of ardent supporters -- on this planet anyway."

"So what do you want to talk to 'em for then?" Vila complained. "For that matter, why hang around here at all? Let's go into the city and steal a ship."

Tarrant snorted derisively. "It's a long walk, Vila."

"Beats sitting here."

"Look, go find something else to do, will you?" Tarrant snapped. "I'm sure there's a bottle of booze somewhere on the base."

With that, he turned back to the controls, unconscious of how much the remark had stung. Vila fell silent, only half-aware of Tarrant's continued muttering between various beeps and clicks of the comm-unit controls.

"There's a weak signal. Keeps coming in from somewhere close by, but something's interfering... blocking it."

Vila turned away without replying. The comment hadn't been addressed to him in the first place, and who cared about some damned phantom signals, anyway?

Nobody out there did.

Nobody in here, either; not when you came right down to it.

_So go on, Vila, find something else to do. Get out of everyone's way; they don't give a damn about you anyhow._

_So why do you stay?_

Avon had asked him that once. Aboard _Liberator..._ A century ago.

He'd answered that he didn't have anywhere else to go, and at the time it had been true. Now... well, maybe it wasn't so true anymore.

_Let's see if we can't find that bottle, eh? And then maybe, just maybe, we'll take that twenty-mile walk._

_Alone._

Well, hell, he'd been alone before, hadn't he? Plenty of times. Hands or no hands, he still had his wits and he'd use them to find a way to stay alive. He always had, all his life, and he could do it again.

Vila took a long, slow breath, and purposely did not look back as he made his way out of the comm center.

Tarrant never saw him go.

 

*      *      *

Avon had not anticipated more company so soon. Some four hours after Jenna's departure, the cell door again rumbled open -- this time on the taciturn figure of Dekker. No longer armed, the man regarded him from the doorway with open loathing before he ground out a terse, "You're to come with me."

Not favoring this gruff invitation with a reply, Avon took his time getting up off the bunk. Dekker apparently had nothing more to say: they negotiated several well-populated corridors in silence until they reached an unmarked door; one of a long line of similar entries. Crew quarters, by the look of them.

Dekker palmed the lock release, gesturing sharply once the door had slid open.

"Inside."

Avon didn't move. "Where is Jenna?"

At his familiar usage, the other man's lip curled disparagingly. "Captain Stannis," he grated, "will see to you when she's free. You're to wait in there."

Dampening the wattage in Dekker's glare with a frostbitten one of his own, Avon brushed past the man into the cabin.

He halted again just inside, not even aware of the door snicking shut behind him.

Orac, no longer the slightest bit dusty, rested on a high glass and chrome table, key in place and lights oscillating casually to its familiar, buzzing drone. The rest of the room was too plushly appointed for most shipboard cabins: mirrors, suede couches, objets d'art. Surely not the common crew's habitat. Unless of course they spent all of their ill-gained booty on interior decorating...

The only reality indeed.

He pivoted back to face the table.

"Orac..."

The response came at once, as pithy as it was prompt. *Yes?*

"Where are we? What is this ship's current heading?"

*That information is not available.*

The echo of Zen brought a frown to Avon's face. "What do you mean, 'not available?' Tap the navigation computers. Make it available."

*If it were possible to comply with your request I would already have done so!* the little box snipped impatiently. *My initial theory that the presence of cylotane in the oxygen supply disrupted my circuits has proven incorrect. I can only conclude that either the computers are somehow shielded, which is unlikely, or--*

"Or," Avon picked up the thread, "they are too old to contain tarial cell technology."

*That is, as you deduce, the far greater probability.*

Avon drummed contemplatively on Orac's plex rim, unknowingly prompting an annoyed rise in the machine's hum.

"So there is no way," he said at length, "for you to... influence... the shipboard computers."

*I did not say that!*

Avon's eyes widened. "Oh?"

*No, I did not. Your question referred expressly to the navigation computers. There are a number of tarial-age systems aboard which could be disrupted, if you so desire.*

"Specify."

*The food processing centers on decks two, five and eleven. Various personal entertainment equipment on recreation deck four. Intercom systems on levels--*

"Orac."

*Yes?*

"Shut up."

Avon yanked the key just as the door clicked open to admit Jenna. She spared him an amused glance on her way to the mirrored wall unit on his left, where she poured a drink from a decanter full of something dark amber. She carried it back to one of the couches and sat back against the cushions, her look demanding rather than inviting that he take an opposing chair.

He remained standing, one hand poised over Orac's key in its holding slot.

"I thought you might appreciate somewhat more comfortable accommodations." Her opening move, delivered with complaisant banality, did nothing whatsoever to inspire his cooperation.

The picture of insincere decorum all the same, he nodded in response. "Very impressive... as far as bribes can go. If, however, we are discussing payment..."

The liquor glass rapped the table, splashing part of its contents on the polished chrome. "I've already told you what I'm offering. Give me an answer, damn you. Yes or no. I'm a busy woman -- I don't have time for games."

"So I'd noticed."

"Yes or no, Avon." She fixed him with a cool stare, devoid of any pretense that she intended to wait long.

Avon moved behind Orac, using it as both a physical and psychological barrier. This was incontestably a Jenna with whom he had never dealt before.

He worded his question as concisely as possible. "Have I a choice?"

"Yes. Two."

"And if I select 'no?'"

"Then I make you part of the bargain for Vaylan," she said easily, "and double my take. It's as simple as that. Yes or no?"

He tried to smile, knowing that it came out a tight grimace instead. "Given the terms..."

"I just did," she overran him with calm but lethal tones. "Say it, Avon. I want your word."

Without effort, the grimace blossomed into full rictus. He bit out a clipped, "Yes," his fists tightening on the corners of Orac's casing.

Jenna's curt nod sealed the agreement. She unfolded herself from the couch and left without another word.

Not long after, when Avon tried the door, he was not surprised to find it locked.

 

*      *      *

One little store of spirits should be easier to find than this.

Vila's hunt through the supply rooms had yielded nothing but empty liquor crates so far. Inconsiderate snobs must have taken it all with them. Well, maybe if he tried checking out near the flight hangars...

Unless Vaylan's people had found it, which he doubted, there was an even bet that a bottle or three would be stashed somewhere in the hangar area. Federation flight mechanics were notorious for sneaking it past the COs; probably explained why so many of their ships crashed on take-off.

Vila knew all the best hiding places.

Unfortunately, the booze wasn't in any of them.

Having inspected eight successive land-flyer bays, each of them open and empty, he was intrigued to encounter a locked door on the ninth. Simple combination tumblers; any child could open it. If only his hands would co-operate.

Bending to the task, he put his ear to the panel and went to work on the numbered dial. Primitive mechanism. Surprising that a Federation base would still use it, but then, they probably hadn't had much to protect or anyone, for that matter, to protect it from.

It took him a full ten minutes to crack a door that should have required only two, but when the last tumbler clicked, Vila's grin rivalled any beginner's at his first burgling triumph.

"Knew you could do it," he congratulated himself. The door rolled upward at his touch, overhead lights flickering on automatically to glint off the painted blue hull of a flyer nestled in the bay.

"Hullo," Vila breathed. "How'd you get left behind, eh?"

He jumped when a soft, nasal voice replied, ~My portside guidance gyros are in need of repair.~

Vila hesitated, then sidled cautiously into the bay to get a better look at what had spoken. On the little vehicle's dashboard, four triangular light-studs winked in sequence. They had flashed brighter in tandem with the voice.

"What're you?" Vila asked timidly.

The lights shifted patterns, growing brighter again. ~I am Flyer 4-5-9,~ it said deferentially, enunciating each digit. With a hopeful air then, it added, ~Are you a gyro-repair engineer?~

"Uh... sorry, no." Vila felt genuine sympathy for it, fellow maroon-victim that it was. "I don't suppose you know where they hide the booze around here?"

Flyer 459 cogitated that, humming to itself in a manner that reminded Vila a little wistfully of Orac. ~Is this a question significant to gyro systems repair?~ it asked.

"One track mind, haven't you?"

With a faintly perplexed buzz, the flyer said, ~One of your references is not contained in my language file. Kindly define 'booze.'~

Vila sighed. "Never mind."

Another buzz. ~Thank you,~ the flyer said. ~The definition has been filed in data stores.~ A series of thoughtful clicks sounded from the cockpit.

"That's not what I--" Vila stopped himself. "Oh, forget it." Leaning on the starboard-side roof, he tried the door and found that it opened easily. Unable to restrain a furtive glance around, he then slipped in behind the controls and took a closer look at things. "So are you completely grounded?" he wondered out loud. "Can you fly at all?"

~I am entirely flight capable,~ it replied in noticeably offended tones.

"Eh? So why'd you get left here, then?"

~I have no information on that,~ it told him. ~My endeavors to signal base operations have failed. The bay doors contain murlanian shielding, which has apparently rendered my communications equipment ineffective.~

"You tried to contact the base?" Well, that explained Tarrant's phantom signal, anyhow.

~My efforts were abortive,~ 459 apologized. ~But perhaps, now that the door is open...~

"No, don't do that," Vila interrupted it. "There's... uh... no one left anyway; they've all gone. I don't suppose you'd care to take a little side trip while you wait for the mechanic, would you?"

~Side trip?~ the flyer queried. ~Please define 'side trip.'~

"You know, a short flight," Vila added helpfully. "Into the nearest city, for instance?"

~That is within my tolerance limitations. The nearest habitation is eighteen point four-four-nine miles distant.~

"Well then," Vila grinned. "What are we waiting for?"

Flyer 459 bleeped softly in reply. ~For you to compress the ignition lever,~ it said.

Vila did.

 

*      *      *

Tarrant's preoccupation with the comm-board kept him from noticing the wall tracking grid until a pre-set alarm squealed for attention. A mechanical voice announced that an unauthorized ground craft was leaving the hangar area.

He made it out onto the tarmac in time to see the flyer speed away, heading in the direction of the town. And though he couldn't have sworn to it in the harsh amber glow of the field lights, he was certain the face behind the controls had been Vila's. His first reaction was to vent every colorful adjective he'd learned in his three years of FSA training. His second was to sit down then and there, pitching a handful of imaginary rocks after the departing flyer.

Well, he'd cocked that up royally, hadn't he? Now, for better or for worse, he really was on his own.

He didn't harbor any self-delusions.

Vila would not be coming back.


	7. Chapter 7

_Croesus_ dwarfed the lone rebel shuttle suspended from her starboard docking port. Earth's grey-blue sphere stretched beneath both of them: to one, the planet was a newly-conquered home. To the other, it was nothing more than a place to divest a particularly valuable hostage.

Avon watched the tiny ship's link-up maneuvers over the shoulder of a disinterested crew member. By Jenna's instruction, the shuttle carried only two: a pilot, and the new Republic's freshly-appointed secretary, a cadaverous woman named Chalmers who came marching out of the airlock like a parade-ground soldier, singled Jenna out immediately, and without preamble demanded, "Where is he?"

Not far from the airlock, Avon stood alone in an alcove of the command center, arms folded in neutral anticipation as both sides of the ransom arrangement came face to face with verbal weapons primed. He would rather have been anywhere else just at the moment. But Jenna had insisted.

"Well?" Chalmers huffed at Jenna's non-response to her initial question. "I was told that President Vaylan would be here when I arrived."

Jenna's derisive laugh nettled the bureaucrat, as it had no doubt been meant to do. "And I was told you'd have the money with you."

Mutual distrust became pregnant silence while the adversaries sized one another up. Avon wondered just how often Jenna had performed ransom deals in the past. If he read the signs correctly, she was far from comfortable with this one.

Not that he was.

Her demand that he be present for this had not exactly pleased him. Par Vaylan knew his identity and could, with a word, easily destroy the fragile cover Jenna had provided him. Her assurances to the contrary had mystified him, until she'd at last volunteered the reason.

"I simply agreed to keep my ships out of Earth sector in future," she'd said with a clear touch of pride. "That, and I promised to keep a lid on the truth about Vaylan's capture and ransom. Silence isn't difficult to buy, on those terms."

Disbelief had laced Avon's reply. "I'd no idea you were so formidable a threat." The sarcasm had earned him a smirk.

"Vaylan thinks so."

"And you trust him to keep his word?"

"He's a dead man if he doesn't. He knows that, too."

"I admire your confidence. But I would nonetheless prefer..."

"I want you there, Avon. I want Vaylan to know you're with me, because he knows we have Orac as well, and that constitutes a triple threat."

Avon had almost, but not quite, smiled. "Insurance." It hadn't been a question.

Jenna's lip curled. "I'll see you on the flight deck at 0900."

She glanced past him at Orac, eyeing the activated computer for a long moment before she turned to go.

This time, she'd left the cabin door unlocked.

The sound of Chalmers' piping voice dragged Avon back into the present. She'd called out a name, and in response, the shuttle pilot emerged hesitantly from the airlock. He was a rabbity little man with a sweating face and dirty hair, and he gripped a battered vinyl satchel in both fists by its soiled plastic handle. He did not look to Avon like anyone who ought to be trusted with several million credits worth of currency.

Without waiting for Jenna's nod, Ries moved out to intercept the man. She diverted the bag to a dormant console, where she eagerly flipped open the clasps to inspect the contents. Brows climbing, she looked back at Jenna and said, "Looks like everything is here. In lovely, non-aligned Beleron currency, just the way you asked for it."

The pilot had flinched at Ries' cavalier handling of the satchel, and now he was eyeing it with a wariness that sent instant warning signals to Avon's inherently suspicious nature. Something in the bag...

Chalmers was glaring at Jenna. "Well?"

 _Croesus'_ captain made an abrupt and soundless gesture. Instantly, someone triggered a door control and Dekker appeared, holding a slightly rumpled Par Vaylan at gunpoint.

The Republic's new President looked anything but overjoyed at the occasion of his negotiated release. The green eyes found Avon first of all, and smoldered in duressed silence. The computer tech returned the stare in kind, gratified when Vaylan broke the contact first, walked boldly away from Dekker's gun and addressed Chalmers.

"Paying off the crooks and pirates these days, Morra? If nothing else, I might have asked for a more charming bail-bondsman."

Chalmers colored, but it was Jenna who answered the rebel leader's insult.

"You'd best be civil to her, President Vaylan," she said. "According to the reports, she's been appointed your new Secretary of State."

Vaylan looked like a man with a mouthful of rancid food and no place to spit. "Let's get the hell out of here," he said, and started for the airlock, brushing past Chalmers' bony shoulder on the way.

"Not just yet."

Avon saw Jenna's eyes widen at his interruption, but he did not meet her gaze directly. Instead, he pushed the sweating shuttle pilot aside and reached toward the open satchel. Ries hovered protectively over the money and looked as though she might try to stop him, but at Jenna's nod she retreated, leaving him an open path. Deliberately, Avon waited for her to step out of the way, then cautiously pulled the edges of the bag apart to peer inside. He saw neatly banded stacks of yellow-gold currency piled several deep. Nothing else.

"You think we're amateurs?" Ries snarled at him _sotto voce._ "We scanned it for every explosive in the known worlds before they so much as set foot out of the airlock."

Avon ignored her completely and studied the contents of the carryall with renewed interest. There was definitely something...

When his hand moved to trace the vinyl strip banding the case, Chalmers' pilot took two rapid steps backward and bumped squarely into Dekker's gun. He started at the contact, but his eyes never once left the satchel.

Avon's hand had come instantly away from the suspicious band at the pilot's reaction. The tech glanced at Chalmers and Vaylan, both wearing annoyed expressions. Then he bent at the knees and knelt to inspect the band visually.

A moment later, Jenna was beside him.

"What is it, Avon? Ries just told you the case was scanned before--"

"I don't know yet." His answer was a series of clipped, succinct syllables, uttered as he tried to find any abnormality in the innocuous brown stripping.

"I think we've delayed long enough," Chalmers protested. "You have your money and we have President Vaylan. Our business is concluded. We'd like to leave now."

Avon listened to the thready voice without looking up. Had there been a hint of nervousness there, beneath the impatience and hauteur? Difficult to be certain...

He extended a forefinger to delicately trace the vinyl piping, following its path to the back side of the satchel where the seams had been joined. Procuring a laser-lance from under the console, he then carefully began to peel away the outer layer of the thin tubing. From the corner of his eye, he saw the sweating pilot panic and bolt, heedless of Dekker's gun, toward the airlock. Chalmers caught him midway by the scruff of his stained collar, dragged him backward, and with surprising strength for a woman of her frail appearance, backhanded him hard enough to send him reeling.

Vaylan entered the fray with an oath and physically restrained her from striking the man again. "What in damnation are you--?"

He stopped, distracted by the sudden realization that the three of them had just been ringed by a small cadre of armed pirates with well-aimed rifles. Jenna Stannis had moved to join them.

"We can't possibly miss a target your size at this range," Avon heard her boast, and then dropping all sarcasm, "What's in the bag?"

"Nothing!" Chalmers nearly spat the word at her.

Inspection concluded, Avon straightened and addressed Jenna. "I would hardly call Rembilt radiation poisoning 'nothing.'" Several heads turned immediately in his direction, dismay written on nearly every face. "There's a miniature capsule concealed in the piping," he went on. "Probably time-released. They didn't even bother to remove the old Federation identity markings."

"Careless of them," Jenna said tellingly. "Is it safe to remove the money?"

"Yes."

Ries gingerly proceeded to do just that while Vaylan turned on Chalmers, teeth clenched in rage.

"You imbeciles! I ought to kill you myself!"

"Dekker." Jenna's command intersected Vaylan's threat. "Escort Secretary Chalmers and her pilot back to their shuttle." She inclined her head toward Vaylan. "That one stays."

The new President went red. "I will not! You've been paid your bloody ransom, I demand that--"

"I wouldn't complain too loudly if I were you," Jenna cut him off, then held out a hand to Ries, who cautiously passed over the empty carryall. "They'll be taking this along, you see."

Vaylan closed his mouth, stepping back without further objection as Dekker accepted the bag from Jenna and herded the Secretary and her sputtering pilot into the airlock. The door whisked shut on dead silence, which condition persisted while interminable seconds measured past. At long last, the lock cycled open again, and Dekker reappeared alone. He'd scarcely resealed the door when the panel above lit up with red lights warning of linkage detachment. The vibration of the shuttle's departure was a murmur through the bulkhead moments later.

"Visual," Jenna ordered, and as one they turned toward the bank of screens that had earlier shown Avon _Mirage's_ demise. The fleeing shuttle was instantly centered on all of them.

"Let's see just how fast they can jettison a little unwanted cargo, shall we?"

No one responded to Jenna's comment: all eyes were on the erratically moving little ship as it pulled away from _Croesus_. Avon fully expected to see the shuttle's airlock cycle immediately open to eject its deadly contents. Instead, the shuttle described a sudden erratic arc and rolled starboard, losing its heading entirely and drifting nose-down toward Earth's ionosphere.

Jenna's expression was unreadable as she turned to one of the technicians at the instrument boards. "Life readings," she said without inflection.

The reply was equally emotionless. "None, Captain."

Jenna gave Vaylan a hard look. "It seems your friends hadn't planned to let us enjoy our reward for very long."

"So you've outlived them." Vaylan shot a resentful glance at Avon. "You still have the money, and Orac."

"I also still have you."

Avon could see Jenna reveling in Vaylan's reaction to that. She let him stew for several moments before she called on Dekker once again. The man came forward with his rifle still comfortably cradled under one arm, as though it had grown there naturally and had always been an extension of his rib cage.

Vaylan interpreted the move as the precursor of an execution. Jenna had, after all, threatened to kill him if the ransom instructions were not carried out precisely. He backed away from Dekker's approach.

"You can't..." he began, and his voice broke on the second word.

Jenna's smile was harder than neutronium. "Dekker," she said levelly, "President Vaylan appears to have missed his shuttle. See that he's escorted down to a safe but remote location. We can tell his friends where to find him after we're well away."

"Right." Dekker swept his free hand toward the exit corridor and with mock politeness, said to Vaylan, "After you."

The President flushed, then with a stiffened back, walked off the flight deck as though none of the preceding humiliation had occurred. When the crew broke into spontaneous laughter moments later, neither Avon nor Jenna could resist joining in.

 

*      *      *

"Hey!"

After the fourth dizzying tilt to port, Vila was definitely beginning to see why Flyer 459 had been consigned to mechanical sickbay.

"Cut it out, will ya? That isn't funny!" Vila rubbed his head where it had struck the port side window. The rapid flash of passing dawn-lit greenery did nothing whatever to help -- it only made him giddier.

~I can assure you that humor was in no way intended,~ 459 said apologetically. ~My portside guidance gyros--~

"Are in need of repair, yes, so you said." Vila groaned as the speeding craft dipped, righting itself again with a sickening wobble. "How much farther do we have to go?" he queried shakily. "Oh... I think I'm going to be sick."

~There are three point seven seven two terrestrial miles remaining. Your second statement is not understood. And as a point of information, there are two craft approaching our stern at a rate of--~

The rest of the sentence was lost in the explosion and blinding flare of a laser bolt. With a cry, Vila grabbed the controls and hung on for dear life while Flyer 459 rolled a perfect 360 and came upright again in time to dodge a second bolt. There was no chance to look back: Vila had no idea who was shooting at him and less time to care. He rattled the booster control in futile desperation, but if anything the little flyer was slowing down instead of gaining speed.

"Oh no. Don't tell me you can't go any faster than this?! These people aren't exactly friendly, in case you hadn't noticed!"

~I'm sorry,~ the flyer apologized effusively. ~I have main engine shutdown and zero restart capacity due to damage sustained in--~

"Never mind that!" Vila shouted. "Can you get us down safe?"

His only answer was a sputter and a shower of sparks from the control panel. Smoke was beginning to fill the cramped cockpit, making him cough.

"Oh, no," he said again. "Oh, don't die on me now!" He pounded the console with an open palm. "I need you, you worthless pile of flying junk! Wake up!"

Flyer 459 emitted a diminutive electronic burp and repeated, ~I'm sorry,~ in an anemically contrite voice. Then it faded into static and was gone. Vila had to grab the console for support once again as they flew at a madly skewed angle over a thicket of tangled underbrush. Branches clawed at the hull beneath him. Sparks shot from the floor: more smoke rose to choke and blind him. There was a loud _crack,_ and then...

Vila opened his eyes on a wild criss-cross of brambles and thorns just over his head. More of what must be the same penetrated the clothing at his back, stabbing him with a thousand prickly needles. It was cold and damp and smelled of singed straw. The smoking ruin of the flyer sat upside down, door hanging by one broken hinge. He didn't remember landing -- or being thrown free. He must have blacked out for a moment...

Panic clutched at him along with the realization. Blacked out. How long had it been? Where were the gunships?

The crisp report of twigs snapping under feet brought him upright in a flash, heedless of the thorns' attempt to lay claim to his clothes. _Company,_ he thought, and chewed his lower lip while he listened for the direction. _Don't think I'll stay around for tea, just the same._

The snapping came again, making him start. There... It had come from over there.

Breath coming in clouds, he started in the opposite direction, paused, changed bearings when he heard voices, then darted into the shadowy protection of the thorny trees.

He stopped only once, to listen.

They were definitely behind him now. But not because he had left them behind.

No longer caring that his own feet where breaking the undergrowth with far too much noise, Vila changed directions yet again and plunged on at breakneck speed. He didn't have to stop again to know that there were still sounds -- crashing footsteps and loud voices -- in his wake.

Whoever they were, they were following.

 

*      *      *

For no particular reason, Tarrant had elected to spend his afternoon rummaging through storage kiosks near the flight hangars. His efforts to contact someone -- anyone -- over the comm-system had come to naught, though that annoying little shielded signal had continued to crop up and disappear again periodically. He still couldn't determine just where it was coming from, though the locaters claimed it wasn't far. He hated unsolved mysteries, but this one had stumped him: whoever or whatever it was did not respond to his efforts to reply.

Neither were the kiosks and open hangars giving him much hope. No sign of a flyer anywhere, and nothing he could hope to put together, either. Vila must have pilfered the last serviceable piece of equipment on the base, and left Tarrant with nothing but the prospect of a very long walk indeed.

Damn him.

The pilot kicked the nearest crate in exasperation, regretting the action in the same instant when the box proved to contain something heavy and metal. Machine parts. Nothing he recognized. If only he could come across a nice supply of anti-grav units...

The distant rumble of ship's engines caught his ear immediately: Tarrant was out onto the tarmac in an instant, searching the horizon with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. From the western sky, the noise grew louder -- and quickly became the piercing shriek of overstressed stabilizers.

It was a ship all right, but as ill luck would have it, one that was in trouble.

When the first flash of sunlight on its hull pinpointed it for him, he saw just how much trouble. Black smoke trailed from its aft engines in oily tendrils. And the configuration was equally discouraging: Federation starburst class pursuit ship.

It was beginning to look like all his luck was bad today.

The grinding screech grew to deafening proportions as the little ship descended at a precarious angle. The pilot was trying for the tarmac. Worse luck! Didn't the idiot know he had a better chance ditching her in the water -- or at least in the grassland alongside the airstrip?

Apparently not.

Tarrant scrambled for cover away from the pursuit ship's trajectory, moving as far into one of the hangars as he could go. The impending crash was still visible from here, almost perfectly framed by the hangar bay doors.

Despite having covered his ears, he still found the noise painful: the scream of a dying ship could penetrate just about anything.

It was going to miss the strip. He could tell by the angle. Whoever was flying her was green, or possibly wounded, but missing the tarmac would give him an even chance at survival, anyhow. If he didn't land her nose first...

The impact was an anticlimactic _whump_ that shook the ground and rattled the walls of the hangar around him. The engine's squeal died at once, but it was immediately replaced by the popping sound of small explosions. That would be what was left of her fuel supply.

Tarrant was up and running, sprinting across the strip toward the gully that had swallowed the ship. The flames were visible from here, gouts of brilliant orange belching more clouds of black smoke, the heat of the fire bending the landscape beyond it. Tarrant skidded off the runway and down the slope in a half-sitting position, pausing at the bottom only long enough to pull out his handgun. No sense letting heroics overcome caution; he'd learned that lesson hard and well.

The hatch was open, sticking straight up into the air beside the shattered ruin of her starboard wing. Over the crackle of the flames he could hear someone coughing -- then he saw the gloved hand desperately trying to grasp the edge of the doorway.

By the time he'd found a way around the fire to the top of the fuselage, a second hand had appeared; neither held a weapon. Tarrant hastily put away his own and reached to haul the struggling man out through the opening. There did not look to be any other passengers, but the intense heat prevented a closer inspection and another fuel explosion sent both men fleeing over the side and into the protective shielding of the nearby rocks.

The massive explosion Tarrant had expected didn't come, but a new series of smaller ones made short work of what remained of the pursuit ship. When he peered over the rock once more, the starburst was a blackened hulk proceeding to collapse in upon itself. The fires were already beginning to burn themselves out.

Not until after the main fuselage had given way did Tarrant turn to look at the man he had pulled from the wreckage, who lay face up in the grass, gulping in lungsful of fresh air, dignified somehow despite the grimy smudges that covered his grey and blue clothing.

Tarrant groaned again.

The last time he had seen that face, it had been surrendering to Par Vaylan's forces on galaxy-wide viscast from Earth. Ex-president Falco, or as Avon and Vila knew him better, former Federation psychostrategist Carnell.

The face looked over at him from the grass, and with every semblance of sincerity, said, "Thank you."

Tarrant's only acknowledgment was a grim nod. If he had to be marooned with a deposed Federation president, he would far rather it be the late unlamented Servalan than this strutting, overdressed, toothy puppeteer.

The latter pulled himself painfully to his feet and brushed futilely at the smudges on his trousers. "Oh dear," he said earnestly, and clucked at the smoldering remains of the starburst. "I did make rather a muck of that, didn't I?"

Tarrant rolled his eyes heavenward, turned his back deliberately and stalked away toward the compound.

His luck had just gone from bad to abysmal.

 

*      *      *

Vila's lungs were threatening to collapse at any moment. He couldn't stop, couldn't hesitate even for a breath of air. They were too close, and still coming, behind him, always just behind him. They'd never slowed down even once and gods, oh gods, it hurt. His barely-healed hands were raw and bleeding, the syntheskin at his chest had torn with the exertion of running... but he had to keep running.

He had to get away.

They were Federation. He'd seen them on the last rise when he'd fallen, clutched at the sliding rocks for support, and glanced down long enough to spot the green rims of their helmets, three bright refractions against the starker black of their too-familiar uniforms.

They couldn't know who he was. They couldn't possibly know. But they were after him all the same, half a breath over his shoulder and still coming -- only he wasn't going to let them catch him. Not again.

Yet another rockfall conspired to undermine his footing halfway up the next incline, and he tumbled, crying out when his ribs struck the jagged shale. Something whined past his ear, twice, three times: the heat of the third shot singed the torn fabric of his sleeve.

Vila righted himself and grabbed at the sparse brush around him for support. It provided little. The thin branches snapped off at his touch, thorns tearing more at his brutalized hands, and his effort to scramble further up the slope came to nothing.

Another blaster shot forced him to ground: more of the loose rock and soil gave way beneath him and he slid several precious yards downward.

He wasn't going to make it.

Panicked, he tried again to grab for anything that would support his weight. There was nothing.

From not far below him, a filtered voice demanded that he freeze.

That was a joke. Almost too funny to bear. He'd been freezing to death from the start, lost out here in this thorn-infested wasteland, and now he was hot and frozen both at the same time: his lungs on fire and his hands too numb to feel anything at all.

Freeze, indeed.

He made one last, foolishly defiant effort to crawl on up the slope. The simultaneous report of three Federation pararifles promptly saw to it that he gave up the effort.

Vila lay shivering, face down amid the rocks while three pairs of booted feet marched systematically up the hillside.

He stifled a whimper when the barrel of one rifle jabbed him cruelly in the back.

Then two pairs of hands yanked him by either shoulder and spun him over. Vila tried to raise his hands in surrender, but they were both pinned by iron grips. He tried to say 'All right, I give up, there's no need for violence, really,' but the words were caught somewhere in his still-heaving lungs.

"What were you doing in a Federation flyer craft?" one of the three looming shapes demanded, and when Vila couldn't answer he was prodded again with the rifle.

"Why did you ignore our warning beacon, not to mention several warning shots?"

"Where did you come from?"

"What were you running away from?"

"Who are you?"

The questions were fired at him too rapidly to be answered. Still fighting for air, Vila managed a polite, if desperate "please." It availed him a rifle stock in the ribs. His yelp of pain was overridden by the virulent cursing of one of his three captors.

"This son of a bitch was half dead before you ran him to ground, Kurtz."

"Yeah? Looks healthy enough to talk to me."

"Pfaugh. Shoot him and have done with it."

"Not just yet. There may not be any garrisons left on planet, but that flyer was Federation. If there's a ship where it came from..."

"Buggering dreamer."

"Shut yer yap then, and let me get on with it!"

Gloved fingers snatched a handful of Vila's hair and forced his head up.

"Tell me where you got it," the filtered voice ordered, shaking him like a doll when he didn't answer. "Who'd you steal it from? Come on, you bastard, tell me!"

The shaking set off a racking cough that Vila was helpless to control. The leather-clad grip released him, backhanded him once for good measure and then retreated. The black shape of its owner rose to rejoin his companions, snorting derisively.

"If enough of that damned flight computer was intact, we might be able to trace it back."

"That's a mighty big if."

"Always the pessimist, aren't ye? Well it's better odds than we've got here by a damn sight. Or do you want t'spend the rest of yer life on this rock pile?"

"All right, all right. But it's a long hike back and my feet are killing me. Think I'd fancy a bivouac first off."

One pair of boots crunched away down the slope. Another came to stand very near Vila's head: he could see himself dimly in their shiny surface, despite the dust and scratches.

"Whatta we do with this one then?"

"Oh, the humane thing, I think." With horror, Vila watched the tip of a pararifle come down to hover just inches above his heart. "We put it out of its misery."

_No!_

Though his mind screamed the word, his lips would not, except in silent, mocking parody. The man behind the gun never noticed.

Vila squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to a god he'd forgotten, only to find that the images behind his eyelids were not gods at all, but well-remembered faces.

Blake.

Gan.

Cally...

When the shot came, he forced the darkness away just long enough to wonder why it hadn't hurt as much as he knew it should. Then he wondered why they'd wasted two more shots.

Surely one would have been enough...

 

*      *      *

*I have not yet correlated sufficient data to adequately answer your question!*

Orac's waspish tones echoed faintly in _Croesus'_ oversized cabin. Avon leaned back in the chair and deliberated on the booted feet he had just placed on the tabletop. Par Vaylan had been delivered to Earth, Jenna had safely collected his ransom, and it was the first opportunity Avon had had to sit down and thoroughly interrogate Orac about the state of galactic affairs. For all the upheavals in government of late, it seemed damned little had changed. And that news served to feed a nagging little worry he had harbored ever since the Andromedan war...

"Give me a prospectus, then. How long before cross-correlative reasoning can supply you with an answer?"

Orac clicked rapidly, manifestly displeased with the demand. *I fail to comprehend the purpose of this inquiry to begin with,* it complained. *The Federation's Central Control was destroyed in the Andromedan attack on the planet Star One. All available computer data thus far corroborates this information.*

"Attribute it to... extrapolative curiosity, then," Avon told the little machine acidly. "How long?"

*One-hundred-twenty-three point zero-seven hours,* Orac huffed. *That is hypothetically speaking, of course. The variables in such a sizable equation do not allow for precise--*

"Perhaps I wasn't clear." Avon took his feet from the table and sat upright, towering over the flashing computer like a menacing bird of prey. The effect, though undoubtedly lost on Orac, served to bolster his own determination. "You are to engage all of your circuits in the resolution of this problem."

The computer emitted a consternated whine. *That,* it opined, *would not be advisable.*

"Nevertheless, you will do it."

*My research requires that--*

"Do it!" Avon's formerly quiet tones became a roar. "I will expect an answer within forty hours. Is that clear?"

When the only reply was a petulant buzzing, Avon brought both hands to rest firmly on the plex casing and repeated with deceptive calm, "Is that clear, Orac?"

Three heartbeats and an agitated hum or two later, the small machine hissed curtly, *Yes!*

"Good." Avon snatched the key with a savage gesture, sliding the small plex rectangle into his pocket by sheer habit as he rose to pace across the room.

There was something he had missed in all of this. Something from the very beginning that should have been obvious and yet, somehow, had not been. If his suspicion proved correct, it was a thing both childishly simple and at the same time diabolical; which further meant, only naturally, that Servalan had to have been behind it.

Even dead, she continued to threaten him.

Hadn't he told Vila once -- told all of them -- that he needed to kill her himself?

Avon paced.

Perhaps it was what he still needed.

The sound of the door signal interrupted his morbid reverie. Annoyingly, Jenna let herself in before he had time to respond.

Avon glowered. Her ship or not, he would have to have a talk with her about privacy taboos. His own were both legion and inviolate, and he intended to keep them that way.

"How is it going?" She'd halted a few steps inside the door, hands to her hips again, blonde hair glittering in the diffused light from the overheads. In all that time aboard the _Liberator,_ he'd somehow managed to overlook the fact that in her own diamond-hard way, Jenna was beautiful. Odd, that. He wasn't usually so unobservant.

"It's going fine," he said noncommitally. "But in future, I would prefer the override codes on that door remain exclusive to me."

Jenna's eyebrows rose. "Nervous?"

"If you like."

She sauntered toward the table and Orac, apparently dismissing his demand for the time being. "So what word do we have on the twelfth sector shipping lanes?"

Avon's momentary blank look vanished beneath a thin, fleeting smile. "Nothing, as yet."

Jenna's expression made the query without need of words.

Avon spread his hands, defensive but adamant. "Orac will see to the matter... as soon as its circuits are free."

Suspicion clouded the pretty face across from him, and clear threat lurked in her words. "I wouldn't like to think you'd already tried to double-cross me, Avon."

Grimacing at that, he pulled the key from his pocket and tossed it at her with a short, expansive gesture of his hand. "Ask it yourself then."

Jenna did, slamming the key home with an angry little flair of her own. "All right Orac. What's all this about not having any circuits free?"

Immediately, the small raspy voice bit back, *You have just answered your own interrogative. Now kindly go away and leave me to my research!*

"And just exactly what research is that, Orac?"

Avon kept his expression carefully neutral as Orac expelled an all-too-human sigh and replied, *If you must know, I am endeavoring to cross-correlate intragalactic data-base input for factors y3, x2 and Q20, to wit that all currently operating tarial-based systems will subsequently disclose central access data via coded overrides DMC and PVAC. The primary alpha-numerical override sequence necessary to initiate interface is K655--*

"Yes, all right," Jenna finally interrupted it. "How long before you'll have any circuits free, then?"

The computer's response made Avon's eyes widen ever-so-slightly. _Croeses'_ captain didn't notice. *Approximately forty hours.*

"Thank you, Orac." Jenna pulled the key and handed it back to him, sour-faced. "I never knew how you could stand to work with it. Obnoxious little bugger. Always was."

Avon's head tilted in unspoken agreement. "It's all in knowing how to ask the right questions." _Or the wrong ones,_ he added to himself.

"You'll get it working on that soon then? A little piracy isn't much good if you've nothing to pirate _from,_ you know."

"Yes of course." He said it absently, more out of desire to be rid of her than anything else, and thankfully, it worked. She departed as abruptly as she'd come, though not without a final look that clearly wondered whether she would ever be able to trust him completely.

It might be best, for her, if she didn't.

After staring at the closed door for some time, Avon resumed his pacing.

The burnished cabin wall gave back a hazy reflection of his lean form: he paused to study it momentarily, reflecting in his own right that it still did not resemble his continued self-image very much at all. Had he really changed that much?

 _Croesus'_ antiquated power systems rumbled through the deck as though to confirm the thought, and in the same moment, a soft and richly-accented voice inquired, _Are we grasping at straws now, Avon?_

"Perhaps," he told the hazy distortion in the wall. "And... perhaps not."

 _If there had been more than Star One,_ the other voice ventured on, _if there had been a second Central Control, surely we'd have known._

"Orac does know. And it will tell me -- in time."

_Don't be so certain.  
_

<>The odd statement made Avon's brows knit. "A computer knows only what it is told to know. Useless, if you haven't asked the proper questions to begin with."

_As you have asked them?_

"Yes."

 _Useless anyway,_ Blake's voice whispered disconsolately. _There's no longer any point to your revenge._

Avon scowled. "There is, however, a point to solving mysteries, and this one implies that there had to be a reason why, in spite of the war, in spite of Star One, in spite of everything, the Federation -- Servalan -- always managed to retain power. How?"

 _Nobility still fails to become you,_ Blake chided, and there was a hint of the broken, defeated man he'd faced on Gauda Prime in what followed. _Whatever legacy she may have left, it is someone else's worry now. The Federation is no more._

"Really? One would have a difficult time telling." Who had said, once, that the more things changed, the more they were the same?

_It's no longer our concern. Leave it, Avon._

"Leave it? That is strange advice indeed, coming from Blake... from the leader of the Great Crusade."

The rather cryptic reply was prefaced by a lengthy silence. _You may learn more than you wanted to know._

"Meaning what, exactly?"

_Only that revenge is a pitiful substitute for morality. Servalan is gone._

Avon's tightly clenched smile became a white blur on the grey metal wall.

"Perhaps," he said very slowly. "...and... perhaps not..."

 

*      *      *

"Damn!"

Tarrant dropped the t-spanner for what must have been the tenth time that morning, shook his wounded fingers and finally gave them refuge in his mouth. When Carnell glanced up from his parts-sorting duties below, it was to see Tarrant's left hand still hovering near the gun he'd placed beside the starburst's charred communications board.

The deposed president broke into an all-too-easy grin. "I can assure you, Captain, that I am thoroughly, unimpeachably harmless," he effused, velvet and vermouth. "If we're going to work together, we really had ought to establish some small modicum of trust, wouldn't you agree?"

With a disgusted smirk, Tarrant shook his bruised fingers in the air for a moment, then re-assigned them to salvaging whatever else he could from the remains of the pursuit ship's cockpit. "Only as far as I can see you," he muttered, not looking at the other man at all. "And it's Tarrant. Not Captain."

"Ah yes. I do apologize." Carnell's penitence held no sincerity whatsoever, which further convinced Tarrant that he'd used the title as a deliberate goad. For a former Federation psychostrategist, he lacked a certain requisite sublety. That probably explained the 'former' part, if nothing else.

When the blackened stump of a subspace transmitter coil staunchly refused to come free, Tarrant finally tossed the wrench away and swore in frustration. Assembling anything that could fly from this mess would be nothing short of a miracle. Getting off this planet, period, looked to offer the same chances, which was to say none at all.

Carnell had looked up again at the outburst: Tarrant ignored him and moved to shift his precarious position on the wreckage. Midway through the action, something sputtered to life on the comm board with a sudden, ear-piercing shriek.

Startled, Tarrant lost his footing and fell away from the unit. The handgun tumbled over the side. He saw Carnell moving even as he dived to follow the weapon's path. The gun struck ground and went off before either of them could reach it, beam flashing outward to the airfield. It sounded... well, wrong somehow, as though it had struck something. Tarrant had no time to consider the matter. He landed hard and rolled toward the gun, snatching it up seconds before Carnell could reach the spot. By the time the blond puppeteer arrived, Tarrant had retrieved the pistol and brought it to bear on the smoke-stained presidential tunic.

"I wouldn't," he said through his teeth.

Carnell drew up short, then presented both hands in surrender. "Really, Capt-- Tarrant... You mistake me." The neon smile did a reprise, all charm and beguiling innocence.

Repressing the urge to pull the trigger was almost more than Tarrant could stand. "You're beginning to make me sorry I pulled you out of this wreck. Now get back over there and finish sorting--"

Another squeal from the shattered transmitter cut him off. This time the feedback subsided quickly -- and resolved into the unmistakable formation of recognizable syllables.

#Tar-rant...#

The pilot very nearly dropped his newly-regained weapon. Carnell, equally surprised, had turned to stare up at the source of the unexpected noise, disbelief plainly written on his face.

#Tar-rant,# the transmitter sputtered again.

Confrontation with Carnell forgotten, Tarrant clamored back over the hulk of the starburst's keel to get at the squawking comm unit and at once began throwing what switches he could still control. Most of them were molten lumps, but some of the toggles still operated.

"Who the hell is this and what are you doing on this frequency?" he demanded impatiently. And when only static responded, "Vila, is that you? Sober up and answer me, damn it, I haven't got all day!" Oh, gods, that was brilliant. Where did he come up with these bon mots of ironic wisdom, anyway? "Vila!"

The voice that answered him at last proved even more of a shock than Vila's might have been. Over a persistent scratch of static, a familiar feminine sigh murmured, #I'm sorry, Tarrant. I have been unable to make contact due to damage sustained in--#

"You??? How in the name of--?" Tarrant's gaze flew automatically to the tarmack just beyond, to the spot _Mirage_ had occupied, and saw -- absolutely nothing. "If this is some sort of game," he said haltingly, "I'm afraid I don't understand."

#I'm sorry,# the voice apologized again. #Servo-units have just completed repairs to fire-damaged circuits that will now enable dissolution of my camouflage field. My signal communications were effectively blocked until a few moments ago, when laser fire pierced the intermesh screening. All prior efforts to contact you were--#

"Those signals were coming from you?" Tarrant glanced sheepishly at the gun in his hand. "And you've been here -- right here -- all along?"

"Do please forgive my asking," came Carnell's polite query from below, "but who are you talking to?"

Tarrant waved him back to silence as _Mirage_ announced that her circuits were now clear. #De-resolution of camouflage screening in ten seconds. Nine seconds. Eight... seven... six...#

"Have you quite thought this through?" Carnell persisted, misunderstanding. "If someone is coming here, it might be wise to find some sort of cover and..."

#...three... two... one. De-res sequence initiated.#

Carnell's protest trailed off and he followed Tarrant's gaze to the tarmac, where the heat ripples had suddenly transformed themselves into a major distortion of the landscape. With a decelerating whistle that vibrated through the earth beneath them and echoed itself on the transmitter, the sleek outline of _Mirage_ melted into being on the airstrip. No longer the sorry little freighter Tarrant had watched the pirate 'destroy,' she took on her true form now: angular fuselage and broad-based 'wings' tapering back to her round engine housing. The vision evoked Tarrant's grin for the first time in days.

 _"Mirage,"_ he said to the comm unit, "you're a sight for sore eyes."

Static crackled over the speaker for a prolonged beat. #Translation?# it asked plaintively.

Tarrant rose to make his way back over the debris. "It means," he called back over his shoulder, "that you're a beautiful lady and I think I love you after all."

He'd begun hiking toward the strip before the pride-filled answer, brimming with affection, reached his ears.

#Oh, any time,# it beamed, and with a lengthy electronic sigh, added lovingly, _#Tarrant.#_

 

*      *      *

Cold.

Frozen air lanced into his lungs with every strained breath. Vila fought to remain in unfeeling limbo, unconscious, but the comfort was perversely denied him. When he was sure he'd convinced his eyes to open, he blinked in confusion at a black expanse of sky strewn with gleaming stars. When had it got dark? And why was he still here, lying on the rocky slope, still alive...?

Off to his right, someone moved, scuffing gravel.

 _So they're not gone,_ he thought dismally. _Stayed behind to finish me off, I suppose. Why take so long to do it then? What are they waiting for?_

Another noise, loud and mechanical, made him start, and the movement set off a new bout of coughing. He realized in the same instant that something soft cushioned the back of his head against the rocks. Now that was an odd concession for Federation troopers. Make the prisoner comfortable before you execute him...?

Something strange was going on here.

The mechanical sound came again, then the growl of a vehicle's engine starting.

"Will you get a move on?" a deep voice grumbled, half-swallowed by the motor's sputtering idle. "I can't hang about here the whole damn night, you know."

Vila frowned at the stars in bewilderment when the reply came from his right, a soft, unmistakably female query.

"Is it done?"

"Whatta you care?"

"Is it done?" she persisted, and Vila tried to turn his head to catch a glimpse of her. All he could see were vague shadows; the outline of the scrub brush against the hillside, and the silhouette of a thin, small something that might have been a person. But it was far too dark to tell. Didn't this bloody planet have a moon or three someplace? Vila could have sworn he'd seen a moon...

"They're put where the worms'll find 'em," the masculine voice answered coldly. "Nobody else, though. Now come on!"

 _Oh no,_ Vila thought, near panic. _They're leaving..._

A surge of pure terror coursing through him, he tried to call out. All he heard was an anemic croaking that would have been laughable -- if it hadn't hurt so much.

The silhouette drifted closer. A delicate hand placed cool fingers to his forehead.  "It's all right."  Her voice was as small as the hand -- almost like a child's.  "Can you stand? We have to leave now."

We?

Vila reveled in the embrace of her arms as she knelt to help him sit up. He wasn't sure his legs would hold him just yet, but he leaned in to her arms and let her assist as much as he dared. If it weren't for all the pain and misery, he could almost get to like this...

They stumbled together twice on the way down the hill. Whoever the male voice had belonged to did not present himself to offer any aid. The engine noise grew louder as they descended until Vila could make out the boxy shape of an ancient paneled transport. At least, it sounded ancient. Combustion engine with cylinders, half of which weren't firing, judging by the racket it was putting out.

"Get in back," the invisible male companion barked at them from the shadows of the driver's cabin. "And hurry it up! This isn't a frigging picnic!"

Despite a painful protest from his hands, Vila managed to hoist himself onto the vehicle's creaking tailgate and slide, with the woman's help, deeper into the blackness of the cavernous enclosure. By the time she'd drawn the gate up with a rattle and clanking of chains, they'd already begun to move, bumping over the uneven terrain so roughly that Vila had to huddle into the corner to keep from being thrown from side to side. Their uncordial driver had presumably switched on the headlamps; amber running lights flickered on around the rectangle that remained open to the night air. It bathed the lorrie's interior in harsh yellow. It also illuminated his companion for the first time, and Vila failed utterly to repress his stare.

She was even prettier than her voice. A little on the thin side, maybe, but beautiful. No argument there. So what was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere with that ill-tempered fellow, rescuing an errant thief from certain death at the hands of three renegade troopers?

Vila moaned. Just thinking about that made his head ache so fiercely that he had to close his eyes again.

His groan brought her to his side almost at once. The cold rim of a flask was pressed against his lips: disappointingly, it dispensed mere water, but the touch of her hands being equally curative, it hardly mattered. Well, not much anyhow.

"Are you in pain?" she asked, and the words were rich with an accent he didn't recognize. Vila kept his eyes shut and nodded hopefully. Maybe she had another flask...

The only reward his ruse gained him was the light stroke of her fingers again on his forehead. Somehow it did seem to ease the aches in his hands and chest and throat. The water had helped, too. When she tipped the bottle for him agian, Vila drank greedily, and opened his eyes this time to admire the view closer on. He couldn't see much for the flask, but there was a crown of jet black hair, limned in gold from the lights, and a pair of eyes, dark and shining.

The truck lurched and some of the water spilled, but he didn't care, so long as she kept her hand on his brow like that. She lowered the drink and smiled at him, a wan little smile as thin as the rest of her. Vila squinted at the odd shadow darkening her right cheek, and his sudden scrutiny made her draw back, turning her face away.

"Don't stop. Please..." The words came out hoarse and barely above a whisper, but they had the desired effect. She turned back, and with chagrin, he realized the shadow beneath her eye was no shadow at all. He didn't get the hand back, but he accepted another swallow of water, thankful for the soothing of his parched throat.

"Thank you," he said when she'd withdrawn the water. And then, because he could think of nothing else to say in the ensuing awkward silence, "I didn't mean to stare, exactly. I mean, I... well I never saw anyone like you. You're native to this planet, are you?"

She looked puzzled, then suddenly suspicious. "And you are not? Were you one of them? A deserter? Is that why they were chasing you?"

Vila blinked at the barrage of questions. "What? Me, in the Federation space patrol? That's one I've never been accused of."

"You're wanted by them then."

"Well, I..." Vila peered at her through narrowed eyelids. "I didn't catch your name...?"

Cunning replaced the suspicion; her smile this time showed genuine amusement. "Nor I yours."

"My friends call me Vila. Well, most of them, anyway."

"Pri."

"Is that all? Just Pri?"

"Is it just Vila?"

Suddenly uncomfortable, he shifted position to lean against the 'starboard' side of the juncture. "Cagey one, aren't you? All right, I can take a hint. D'you mind if I ask what you were doing out there? I mean, not that I'm ungrateful, or anything..."

"We were on our way to Havna from the markets in Kurafe. Duram spotted the troopers and decided to find out what... or who... they were tracking."

It was hardly an adequate answer, but better than nothing. "Oh," Vila muttered. "Well I'm glad for that, only..."

He trailed off when the truck suddenly swayed to a halt, brakes squealing. The chains on the tailgate clattered, and he heard the muffled whump of a door slamming. The amber lights stayed lit, and in a moment a pale, heavy-set man dressed in a dirty tan burnoose hove into view around the corner of the enclosure. He glared at the two of them for a prolonged moment before he reached to lower the tailgate. Pri retreated to the opposite corner as Duram shifted his considerable weight onto the truck bed and came toward Vila.

The thief found himself staring up at a human mountain. This one stared back, though, in a way that reminded him entirely too much of a butcher shop patron sizing up a cut of meat.

"What's yer name?"

"Larn," Vila lied, appalled that the name Servalan had given him should come so easily to mind. Duram looked less than convinced anyway, which somehow wasn't surprising.

"M-hm. You on the Federation's wanted lists, maybe?"

Vila tried very hard to smile. "There isn't any Federation anymore. Or hadn't you heard?"

Duram's laugh was not a pleasant sound. "They call it by a different name now. Same wanted list, though. Same bounties, too, 'cept some of 'em are even bigger. Yours'd maybe be one of those. I've seen you before..."

"Not likely," Vila said too quickly. "A lot of people say that. I mean I have one of those faces, you know, that everyone thinks--"

"Get up."

"Eh?"

An enormous fist wadded the collar of his tunic and hauled him upright, then spun him and pushed his face into the corner. His hands were pulled roughly behind him; something cold and metal clamped tightly over either wrist. Vila bit back a cry at the renewed assault to his injured hands.

"Let's just keep you in one place till we find out about that, shall we?"

Vila heard another metallic snap before Duram shoved him back to the wall. Chain links rattled behind him and nearly pulled him up short before he slid all the way to the floor. He looked up to see Duram tucking a key into the folds of soiled cloth over his huge stomach.

Chortling, the big man turned his back and made his way to the tailgate, the truck swaying visibly with each of his broad steps. Vila watched until he'd disappeared from view, then stared at nothing in particular until the truck's engine had rumbled to life once again.

"Wonderful," he said then, to no one in particular either. And to himself, he added, _For a man of your talents, Vila Restal, why is it your best one is for getting yourself into fixes like this???_

 

*      *      *

"Your forty hours are up, Orac."

*Up?* the sarcastic echo came promptly on the heels of Avon's statement. *I gather this colloquialism has a particularly relevant significance with regard to--*

"You know what it means." In no mood to trifle, Avon stood with his arms crossed, barely suppressing the sudden desire his right foot had acquired to tap impatiently on the deck flooring. "I want an answer. Now."

*The answer to your postulative interrogative is unattainable.*

Avon's eyes narrowed, immediately suspicious of the response. "Explain."

Something in the pattern of the computer's oscillation was... different; Avon couldn't quite identify it.

*The existence of an auxiliary control complex cannot be proven via the interrogation of extant Federation computer systems. They are devoid of any data on the subject.*

"Are you then saying that the secondary control does not exist?"

*No! I said--*

"That it could not be proven." Avon smiled. "Naturally." He chose his next words with precision. "Do you therefore believe that it does not exist?"

*As I must deal with available data and not with the human propensity for extrapolative fantasy, I would therefore so conclude, yes.*

The odd tone in Orac's whine persisted, and out of nowhere, an echo of something Blake had once said to the computer teased Avon's memory.

_Well you're capable of evasion, anyway._

The right question. It all hinged on asking the right question.

In short, clipped words, he said, "That is not what I asked."

*I am not afflicted with the human irrationality allowing faith in that which is intangible!* Orac snapped.

Somewhere, Avon was sure Blake's ghost was chortling at that.

He rephrased the question. "Based upon the evidence, then, can you continue to postulate that a control must still exist?"

Orac's irritated whir dropped a quarter tone and slowed. *I do not need to postulate,* it said bluntly.

Avon blinked, frown deepening. "And why is that?"

*The statement is self-explanatory. There is no need.*

Only it wasn't self-explanatory. Or... was it?

Wrong question: Orac was capable of evasion.

Right question...

"Is there a secondary control, Orac?"

*I have just told you that such cannot be proven via--*

"Is there a secondary control? Answer the question."

Orac's operating whine surrendered to dead silence before the reply came, a succinct and unmistakably bitter admission.

*Yes.*

Avon stared.

The right question.

"How long have you been aware of that?"

*For some time now.*

"Precisely how long?"

*Six Earth standard years, four months, nine days and forty-five point one-nine-one hours. Now if you are quite finished wasting my time with such frivolous--*

"Oh, not by a long shot!" Mind reeling, Avon held the activator key firmly in place. Orac's customary buzzing had resumed the moment the definitive 'yes' had been wrung from it.

Six years?

It wasn't possible.

Six years would mean that before Star One, before Blake and Cally had first encountered Ensor, from the moment of its very creation, in fact, Orac had known...

And said nothing.

But then, it had never been asked, had it?

Not properly.

Avon paced away and back again.  "Where?"

*'Where' is an imprecise inter--*

"I want the exact location of the auxiliary control complex. And I want it now."

*The complex,* with an unexplained emphasis on the word, *is located at co-ordinates 626-049-509 in the Tardak System.*

Avon went rigid, as though Orac had fired back a plasma bolt rather than a simple reply.

Caphtor lay in the Tardak System. Caphtor and a certain berillium mining colony run by a man who called himself Lan Troas.

Servalan's fine hand showing itself yet again. It had to be. So she had known all along as well. Even about Tav...

There must be a pattern, a connection. Coincidence was a force in which Kerr Avon had never placed any faith.

Carefully, he placed his hands atop Orac's casing once again. "Are you capable of diverting this ship to the previously designated co-ordinates?"

*As I have already explained, this vessel is not equipped with tarial cell technology.*

"Can you change our course, yes or no?"

*No!*

"Then give me the best probable option for my changing it."

*There is a computer terminal locked behind the bulkhead panel to your immediate left,* Orac snipped. *Given the ability to bypass both the locking mechanism and the security coding, and given my assisting expertise in reprogramming the navigational controls, there is no reason whatever to assume that it should not be possible to--*

"Shut up, Orac."

Laser probe already in hand, Avon turned for the bulkhead.

 _Croesus_ was about to take an unscheduled detour to Tardak.

 

*      *      *

Tarrant reveled in the opportunity to once again sit behind _Mirage's_ control console. Five hours remained before her servo-robots would complete repairs, and they would be flight capable at long last.

It was nearly perfect.

Nearly.

He had the ship to himself and the entire galaxy to roam, without a care. Except, that is, for two nagging little problems: namely what had become of both Avon and Vila.

And then of course, there was that other little matter of just what to do with Carnell...

When had life got to be so bloody complicated, anyhow?

At least on Dauban, he'd never had to worry about anything more complex than where to dig for water the following day. Most of the time...

"Anything I can do?"

The puppeteer's artificially pleasant voice floated in through the main hatch, inspiring Tarrant's aggravated sneer.

"Yes. Stay the hell off my ship."

"Now now." Carnell hovered on the gangplank just outside the main entryway, not quite ready to dare Tarrant's wrath by crossing the threshold. "There's really no need to be unpleasant. I'm certain we can come to some agreement."

"We already have," Tarrant clipped, not looking at him. "You're staying here."

Carnell's long lashes eclipsed his eyes twice before he said, "That wasn't precisely the arrangement I was hoping to negotiate."

Feigning a pre-occupation with the console, Tarrant spared him a jaundiced glance. "I wasn't aware you had anything to negotiate with."

"Oh, but I have. Perhaps the location of your missing comrade would interest you?"

"Which one?"

"Avon."

"You know where Avon's got to?"

"I know where behavioral analysis says he will be within a certain reasonable length of time. Presidents, you see, no matter how brief their length of term, are privy to certain... er... state secrets, shall we say?"

Tarrant smirked. "That's all very fascinating I'm sure, but it isn't good enough. _Mirage?"_

#Yes, Tarrant?#

"Are you still monitoring the Orac carrier wave, and can its location be pinpointed?"

#Yes, to both questions,# the ship replied cheerfully.

Tarrant's grin wasn't quite so pleasant. "Where Orac is, Avon is," he said to Carnell, "and I don't need you to find either. You're one strike down. Want to try again?"

The puppeteer wore a wry face; the gamester about to play a final card on which his life and livelihood might rest. "Perhaps the Federation's best-kept secret might be of interest to you, then."

"I doubt it."

"The location of Central Control."

"It was destroyed in the war. Or hadn't you noticed?"

"The first one was destroyed. There is another, still concealed, still operating. And I can take you to it."

Tarrant leaned back to regard the other man with open hostility. "Why should you do that?"

"In the interest of either reprogramming or destroying it -- whichever proves more feasible. My 'control' has been taken from me as well -- or hadn't _you_ noticed?" Carnell sighed, long and meaningfully. "My dear Cap-- Tarrant, we are working toward the same goal, you and I. Is that so terribly difficult to accept?"

The pilot sat upright, still scowling. "All right," he said grudgingly, and his hand rested tellingly over his holstered gun. "Come aboard. The unoccupied cabins are starboard and aft. And Carnell--"

The blond man turned back from his attempt to make a hasty escape down _Mirage's_ central accessway.

"Yes?"

"One last thing."

Carnell waited, forcing a smile.

"If you call me Captain one more time -- I'm going to shoot you. Clear?"

The smile widened. "Quite."

He disappeared down the corridor. Tarrant could have sworn he heard the diminishing echo of someone whistling a tune...

 

*      *      *

Vila groaned when the truck hit a particularly nasty bump, making the manacles bite further into his wrists. There really wasn't any justice left in the universe. Someday, he just had to find a place where he could live in peace and quiet, and where everyone wasn't determined to shoot at, capture, torture, incarcerate or order him around.

"Ow!"

The next lurch slammed him into the truck wall, and his startled yelp brought Pri back to his side with the water. Vila refused it.

"Oh, go away!" he snapped temperamentally. "A fat lot of help you've been! Leave me alone, can't you? At least let me be miserable in peace."

She retreated with such a hurt look that he at once regretted the words. Before he could say so, though, the lorrie bounced over yet another crater in the so-called road -- and the engine sputtered to a grinding halt. The lights flickered off. Vila breathed a heart-felt sigh of relief at the welcome stillness, all the while trying to ignore the slamming, banging and cursing coming from beyond the separating wall.

Pri had curled disconsolately against the tailgate; there were tears glistening on her cheeks. Vila felt a sharp pang of guilt at that, realizing in the same moment that he could see her tears, even though the lights were out.

The sun must be coming up.

"Oh, look," he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that, not really. I, uh... don't suppose you know how to unlock...?" The dark eyes merely glistened back at him in denial. Vila sighed. "Thought not." He squirmed against the bonds in search of a more comfortable sitting position, only to discover that there wasn't one. If he could just find something to use as a lock pick...

His gaze fell on the water flask she had dropped in the process of fleeing back across the truck bed. It had a short length of chain attached to either side of the metal throat by two s-shaped wires.

"Er..." Vila tried turning on his smile. When all else failed, well, there was always charm. "I think I would like a bit more water after all. Do you mind?"

She obliged, though not without some hesitation. Duram's muffled curses floated through the wall again, from further away this time. Vila could hear the creak of rusty springs and the thunking of a support rod seeking purchase in the truck's dented bonnet.

"Please..." he said abruptly when Pri made to withdraw again. "Would you mind awfully much pouring some of that on my hands? I'd be ever so grateful if you could just..."

"I do not need your gratitude," she said bluntly, with a sudden coolness that reminded him uncomfortably of Avon. One delicate hand grasped his shoulder and pulled him forward just far enough to allow her room for the flask. Vila jumped in spite of himself when the cold water trickled onto his wrists. It stung rather fiercely, but he had to pretend otherwise or this was never going to work.

"Ah," he said a shade too succinctly for comfort. Then, twisting his left hand just far enough to get a grip on the small container -- and by pleasant consequence, three of her fingers -- he added a polite, "May I?" and slipped it from her hand. "Thank you so very much," he effused, and while he held her eyes with yet another smile, he turned so that she was forced to withdraw her arm from behind him. "Oh, yes," he murmured, pretending to pour more water. "That's much better. Just a bit more, I think..."

Well, that had all gone smoothly enough. Now to coax the deadened fingers of his right hand to work one of the wires loose.

"How did you burn your hands?" she asked with a genuine sympathy that immediately warmed Vila's heart. "Were you in a fire?"

"Fire?" Now how had she known that? "Er, no, not exactly. That is..." Those eyes were so penetrating that he was certain she could see straight through him to the rapidly surrendering wire. "There was a bit of an explosion. Nasty business. And then those bloody thorns you call a forest, and the sharp rocks, and oh yes -- Mr. Charisma out there with his manacles." He steered promptly off that track by interrupting himself. "How'd you know about that? The burns, I mean?"

She sat back, and there was a warmth in her eyes when she replied, "My family were healers."

"Oh. Miss them, do you?"

The eyes hardened. "They are all dead now. Killed in the final siege against the Federation."

"Oh," Vila said again, stupidly. "I'm sorry. How did you... er... that is... if you don't mind my asking...?"

"Duram owns my bond," she said. "I ran away from the so-called 'medical career' the Federation had chosen for me. My reward for that was a Gamma level bordello. Duram 'bought' me there eight months ago. So you could say I owe him. For that much."

Vila had to admire the toughness she'd imparted to that abbreviated account. For all her frail appearance, Pri had obviously been a determined (and successful) survivor. He knew the conditions only too well. No matter how you had to do it, you stayed alive -- because to give up and die was just never an alternative.

The wire snapped free of its mooring: he coughed to cover the sound and gently probed with the broken tip until he found the lock on the left cuff. The awkward position hurt, but he schooled his face not to show it, and hoped she had forgotten about the water bottle.

Birds chittered out there in the morning, and the chill was dissipating along with the dark. He could see Pri with almost total clarity now -- well enough to approve enthusiastically of every pretty inch. Except for that cheek...

"Did he do that?" he blurted, tactless but desperate, all the same, to keep her talking -- and distracted.

She gave him a thin, humorless smile. "He wanted to buy a catamite in Kurafi. I objected."

The thief had to search disused vocabulary for the term, found it, and failed to quite discourage the resultant blush. If Duram's tastes were that eclectic... Vila found he was acquiring a whole new appreciation for his status on the most-wanted list. When lust and greed competed, the latter nearly always won.

He cleared his throat and said, "I... uh... take it you won?"

This time there was pride in the widening smile. "I paid a competitor to outbid him."

"Eh?" Vila coughed again when the primitive tumbler clicked and he had to shift over to the other cuff. "How?"

"I stole part of Duram's purse to do it. That's why..." Her hand strayed to the bruise for a moment, then dropped away as though to dismiss the thought. Outside, Duram's banging and imprecations on the truck's hypothetical ancestry were both growing louder. Pri inclined her head toward the noise. "You know, when he says he's seen you on a wanted list, he probably has. So tell me, 'Just Vila,' how did you get there? Did you murder someone?"

"Me?" He had almost dropped the pick-wire. Working left-handed was always harder, especially when half your fingers refused to feel anything. "Do I look like a cold-blooded murderer to you??"

She actually laughed at that, and surprisingly, he found the implication more than a little insulting.

"Well, it's not as though I couldn't be," he said inanely. "But I'm not!"

"Well, what are you then? Pirate? Gunfighter? An infamous intergalactic smuggler, perhaps?"

"Er... not quite," he hedged. "But you could say I work in a related field. I'm a recognized expert at... uh... 'appropriations engineering.'"

Her laughter swelled until she was obliged to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep Duram from overhearing. Vila had the clear impression that she hadn't laughed at all in a good long while.

The last tumbler clicked over.

"I like you, Vila," she said, another frank admission he hadn't expected. "You make me feel..." She leaned closer. "...happy."

When her lips found his, Vila abandoned any further hope of concealment, allowed the dangling shackles to drop, and wrapped his arms around her. Pri's 'surprised' response was a deeper kiss, followed by an admonition whispered playfully in his ear.

"Took you long enough," she said.

Vila's indignant "What?" was drowned by the roar of the truck's restarting engine. Pri jumped, but Vila prevented her pulling away by holding the embrace a moment longer.

"Pardon me, Madame," he said into her ear, "but would you care to accompany me on a bid for freedom?"

Leaping off the back end of a moving truck wasn't Vila's idea of fun at the best of times: it became twice as difficult when you had to convince a terrified companion to jump with you. He'd spared little thought, either, for just what they would do out there. Putting distance between Duram and themselves took the only priority, for the moment. If he could make his way back to the base... There was a good chance Tarrant would still be there. But then, who knew? A spaceship might already have happened by. Miracles had been known to happen. Tarrant might have got lucky...

They must have been walking for hours. It felt more like days. Vila only knew that his feet hurt far more than the rest of him, which had been hurting for quite a while already. They'd trudged halfway across a dreadfully boring, flat yellow plain between two mountain ranges, heading for the shelter of a towering pile of boulders that marked the only break in the dull expanse of land. They weren't quite close enough to run for it when Vila heard the truck's engine.

He turned and froze for several wasted seconds before it occurred to him that Duram's broken down old wreck was making very good time on flat land -- and making it straight for them.

With a horrified shriek, Pri bolted for the rock formation. She'd never make it in time, but Vila pounded after her anyway, adrenaline blotting out all thought of tired feet. The truck roared closer. When he dared risk a glance over his shoulder, it loomed less than six yards behind, bearing down on him like a hungry black hole, and he could see Duram's fury-reddened face behind the wheel. Heart leaping, Vila coaxed his legs to run faster.

It wasn't enough... Not nearly enough!

Pri, in her panic, had veered left, but the truck kept coming directly at Vila. That made a vicious, proprietary kind of sense. Duram could always pick Pri up later, punish her accordingly. Vila, on the other hand, had offended the 'master' twofold: he'd both escaped and taken a valuable item with him. And then there was the reward for his capture, which was still collectible regardless of whether he was turned in breathing...

Or dead.

He stumbled, fell, rolled to one side and scrambled up again to keep on running, startled when the truck screamed past him and skidded in the dry soil, fishtailing until it finally halted and faced him again. It lay between him and the boulders now. He was cut off.

And Duram knew it.

Not much point in running anymore.

Vila stood staring at the truck's dirt-encrusted windscreen, panting, trying desperately to think and coming up with no answers at all.

Gears clunked. The engine raced, shifted again. Tires spewing sand, the truck came barrelling toward him.

Vila ran because there was nothing else to do. Because just standing there made it too easy. Because just giving up and dying was never an alternative.

Then the impossible happened.

He wasn't given to hallucinations as a rule. But he could have sworn that rock formation had just fired a plasma bolt over their heads.

If Duram had noticed at all, he paid no heed. The lorrie was still gaining on Vila by rapid degrees, with plainly murderous intent.

Until a second plasma burst struck it broadside and turned it into a brief, brilliant fireball.

Duram hadn't even had time to scream.

Vila sat down where he was, barely out of the corona of the truck's burning remains, and fought to get his breath back. Within the space of three gasps, the boulders dissolved themselves and reformed into something he'd never thought to see again.

So Tarrant had got lucky after all.

Vila rested his head on his knees, too weary even to move for the moment. Let them come to him, damn it; he'd risked life and limb enough for one day. He scarcely acknowledged even Pri's presence when she came back to sit quietly beside him, one hand twined gently with his own. Presumably, she was content to wait for explanations, too.

Embers were still crackling in the truck's hulk when footsteps came crunching across the plain toward them, and Vila glanced up to find a smug-looking Tarrant, gun in hand, gazing down at them.

"You just never can tell who you're going to run into these days," the pilot joked.

"Very funny," Vila sighed, unhumored. "You were there all that time, and you didn't do anything until now? Heart failure amuses you, does it?"

"Not really." Tarrant cast a nervous glance at Pri. "I had wanted it to be a surprise. I just hadn't counted on your friend with the antique tank."

Pri was on her feet, staring at _Mirage_ with open amazement. "What is it? How did you--?"

"How did you find us?" Vila interrupted. "Not even _Mirage_ is that smart."

"She's a lot smarter than any of us thought. We went looking for lone humanoids within a ten mile radius and finding none, took two as the next best option. And here you are. You want the full encyclopedia now, or would you perhaps rather get the hell out of here?"

Vila took Pri by the hand and headed toward the waiting ship.

"I would perhaps rather," he half-echoed wearily. Warm thoughts of a shower, a med unit, a clean bed and a nice tall glass of soma were already filling his head.

 

*      *      *

She should have killed him when she had the chance.

Jenna palmed open the door to Avon's cabin, overriding his override for the third time. _Croesus_ recognized her palm print over any other, but that was small consolation when, in spite of it, a mad computer genius had just successfully hijacked your ship.

"All right, Avon." He was already standing when she stalked in, almost as though to protect the terminal behind him. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The answer came too fast, too easily. "Pursuing that wealth you speak of so fondly."

"Oh, of course you are. I want control of the ship back. Now."

This time he hesitated for a fraction of a moment, as though he hadn't quite expected so direct an approach. His reply was direct enough though, if less than sincere.

"Sorry."

When she walked toward the terminal he caught her by the arm and held fast, a stern, determined grip. Jenna burned him with her eyes. "Let go of me."

He took the other arm in answer, pulling her roughly to him. The kiss shocked her less for its brutal approach than for its invasion of personal space. The Avon she remembered would never have considered breaching that wall -- with anyone.  Still, ever since that business with Meegat on Cephlon, it had been apparent that a number of women found something about Avon irresistably sensual.

Jenna simply wasn't one of them.

He broke the hold at once when she pressed the muzzle of her gun to the side of his head. No trace of any fear showed in his eyes, though, and that rankled her more than a little. She held the gun on him even after he'd backed off a few feet, tilting his head in that annoying habit he so often used to connote challenge. Jenna was prepared to meet it.

"You'll release control of this ship now, or so help me I'll shoot you where you stand."

*That,* said a piping voice from the center of the room, *would be extremely foolish.*

Avon's gaze wandered slowly in Orac's direction. Jenna's remained aligned with her gun. "I didn't ask you," she said.

*Nevertheless, I am compelled to point out that following the course you suggest would result in catastrophic consequences.*

She didn't like the smug look on Avon's face. "What are you talking about, Orac?"

 _*Croesus_ has been programmed to self-destruct precisely thirty seconds after my notification that Kerr Avon has been harmed in any way. I would advise you to exercise extreme caution, as there is no possible countermand.*

Quelling outrage, she lowered the gun, finally putting it away altogether. Now that threats had failed, she would merely be forced to try another tactic. Even diplomacy could sometimes be a weapon...

"All right," she said tightly. "So you've won. For now. I at least have the right to know where you're taking us. And why."

He turned and calmly sat back down to tap out something on the keyboard, as though none of the preceding had occurred to interrupt him.  "Well," he said, with the same toneless inflection she remembered -- and detested, "all you had to do was ask."

 

* * *

_Mirage's_ med unit was a little bit of heaven. Her soma was in good supply, the bed was comfortable, the tissue regenerator had done wonders for his hands... And then there was Pri, whose forehead massages were certainly more marvellous now that he was in a position to properly appreciate them.

Vila luxuriated in the sheer hedonism of it all, stretched out on the med cot with a tall glass of soma on one side and Pri seated on the other. Would that this moment could go on forever!

"Who is this Avon they speak of?" Pri asked suddenly, shattering the rather bawdy fantasy that had been stirring under his eyelids.

Vila winched open a reluctant eye. "Who?" he said lazily, and reached to draw her hand back to his forehead. "Oh, no one very important, really. Just some would-be embezzler we picked up once. Blake kept him around just to fiddle the computers whenever we needed it." He yawned expansively through the latter part of the sentence.

Pri's voice held a smile. "Is that why your friends are so anxious to find him?"

Despairing of any further quiet, he opened both eyes. "Well it's not him so much. It's this plastic pain-in-the-bum he's got with him named Orac, and everybody wants Orac, and then there's the Federation's real control complex on Caphtor that Carnell supposedly knows about, and if all that isn't complicated enough for you, whatta you know but _Mirage_ goes and figures we're all about to converge in the same damned place. I don't think I even want to know what's going on anymore." Vila sat up in the bed, arms crossed in consternation. He still hadn't straightened out just how and why Carnell was aboard, and why their pilot hadn't shot the man on sight. Some of Dauban's rocks must have found their way into Tarrant's head.

"My luck," he grumbled, "to end up with a pair of ego-bloated, toothy Alphas for crew. As if Avon weren't bad enough."

"You speak as though they were not your friends."

"They're not! And don't you turn your back on them either, especially Tarrant. Especially the other one, too, come to think of it. I wouldn't trust him with two tenths of a credit."

She frowned. "If they are not your friends, why do you stay with them?"

Vila hated complex philosophical questions. "Long story," he said dismissively.

"You do not value their friendship?"

"It's not a question of friendship, exactly. We watch each other's backs. Most of the time. It's sort of an old habit."

"Duram used to say that anything and anyone could be bought for a price. Another man I knew once, though, told me that Earthers have a saying. 'The best things in life are free.'"

Vila pulled a face. "Whoever said that just hasn't been caught yet."

Pri didn't laugh. Her look of discomfort, in fact, worried him just a bit. Women always got that look when they had something 'important' on their minds.

"When you find this Avon, and this Control place," she said hesitantly, "what will you do then?"

Vila shifted positions a bit. "I... uh... hadn't really thought about it yet. Well, surviving from one day to the next has been hard enough lately, hasn't it?" The hurt look coming into her eyes spurred him onward. "You could stay on as long as you like, though. There wouldn't be any problem. When this is over, whatever it is, we'll take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere at all."

Her voice had become so faint he could scarcely hear it. "I want to go with..." She trailed off abruptly, rose and rushed across the room, compelling a bewildered Vila to get up and follow. If he lived to be a thousand, it would never be long enough to learn to understand women. Like them, yes. Understand them...

"Now what's the matter?" he asked plaintively. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, of course not."

"Then why are you...?" She was crying. Vila put cautious hands on her shoulders. "I told you, this ship can go just about anyplace. We'll take you. I promise."

She turned, the lovely face he had just helped to repair with the regen-unit streaked now with tears. "I don't want to go anywhere. Don't you understand? There isn't anywhere... anyone..."

Vila blinked, staring dumbly. "Oh," he said, and then again, when the thought had sunk well and truly in, "Oh." Why had he assumed she would have a place to go? Stupid of him. But then of course, the alternative was to...

Vila let his grin spread slowly and purposely. "Well, that's not so terrible, then, is it? The idea of being stuck with me for a while?"

There were remnants of both fear and doubt still lingering in her eyes, in the small pout of her lips. Well, he knew one guaranteed cure for that.

Vila gathered her into his arms and kissed her.

 

*      *      *

Caphtor had not changed.

Neither had the offices of the Troas Beryllium Mining Corporation, to which Orac's co-ordinates, not surprisingly, had led.

Coincidence had ceased to be any sort of possibility.

Coincidence didn't exist.

Avon moved rapidly down the broad, carpeted hall, Orac in hand, Jenna keeping pace alongside. He would have preferred that she stay behind -- but he'd found that his preferences held very little sway over the _Croesus'_ intractable captain. Even his mention of personal matters which did not concern her had been no deterrent.

Well, if nothing else, the extra gun might well be useful.

Workers traversing the same corridor paused and stared, ultimately backstepping out of the way, after which they stood and stared some more. Avon barely noticed them.

His mind was on matters far more ponderous: the ramifications of Servalan's having installed Control here in the first place; whether she had known of Lan Troas' original identity; how the computers might be reprogrammed to at least approximate Blake's dream of a liberated galaxy. And the possibility he least wanted to consider: whether Lan... Tav... had been a willing participant in all of this, in league with Servalan from the start.

 _You may learn more_ , Blake's ghost had warned, _than you want to know._

Guile. Deception. Manipulation. Betrayal masking still more betrayal. All of these things had conspired with fate to dominate his life, more often than not in an effort to end it. Soon -- perhaps today -- they would finally succeed.

The receptionist's desk barring entry to the executive suites was abandoned, but as he hadn't intended to stop anyway, he bypassed it without comment.

"Avon..."

Jenna's cry, faintly tinged with alarm, made him turn back, Orac whirring impatiently in his arms.

*We are now fourteen point two-seven meters from the Control Complex entrance,* the computer reported. *I would not recommend any further delay.*

Avon, watching Jenna, ignored it. The desk, it seemed, hadn't been abandoned after all. The body of a pale young woman lay sprawled on the floor behind it. Even from this distance, the laser burns on her clothing were evident.

Orac's bulk, suspended by one lucite 'handle,' shifted promptly to Avon's left hand. The right quietly snicked his gun from its holster.

He swung toward the door bearing Lan Troas' name. It stood partially open, and voices -- one voice -- floated from the other side.

"One way or another," it said, "I'm going to get in. So why don't you just be reasonable, eh? She gave you the code word. I'm sure of that."

Avon exchanged an incredulous look with Jenna. The last time either of them had heard that voice, it had been boarding a shuttle from _Croesus_ and returning to Earth, by way of a well-paid ransom.

Avon shoved the door back, going in gun first.

What confronted him afforded no time for thought. He caught a glimpse of Tav, bound to a chair beside the glassine table, and Par Vaylan standing over him with something in his hand. He spun at Avon's intrusion, raising the weapon as he turned.

Avon shot him.

Vaylan uttered a choking, startled cry, one hand clutching at his heart, the other spasming as the object Avon had taken for a gun tumbled and rolled away across the floor.

Laser probe...

The alcove in the left wall of the office, mirrored and tiered with crystal decanters, had opened outward to reveal a door -- and the winking lights of a computerized lock. Avon glanced once at Jenna. Without need for words, she retreated to the front door, and gun in hand, put forth the unconvincing pretense of guarding the entrance.

Vaylan already forgotten, Avon crossed swiftly to Tav, deposited Orac on the table, and bent to untie the man's bruised and bleeding hands. He was still alive, though the burns on his face and clothing gave the condition little hope of continuing long. Pain-fogged eyes struggled to focus on Avon, recognition dawning slowly.

"You should have stayed away," he whispered.

As unsure as he might have been with a stranger, Avon kept his gun in a neutral but prominent position. "Why?" he demanded simply.

Tav's gaze traveled back across the room, to the desk where the holo-cubes were still displayed. "You don't really imagine that I had any choice?"

The smiling faces in the cubes stared accusingly back at them. Avon could think of nothing to say.

"She took them to Morrad," Tav said hoarsely. "Two systems away, but it might as well have been a thousand. We were allowed one vis-screen communication a month -- as long as I co-operated. Then you came... and I let you go. She..." His voice caught and stopped, very nearly becoming a sob.

Avon slipped his gun back into its holster, a half-conscious gesture of grim acceptance. "I'm sorry," he said flatly.

Empty words, without meaning for either of them.

"I never saw them after that. She told me one had lived. If I wanted to know which, to see or talk to them, all I had to do... was find a way to bring you back here. With Orac. Couldn't have done that if I'd wanted to... One was alive, she said. I never knew if it was true. She could be very convincing, your Servalan..."

"Yes," Avon agreed, letting the possessive pronoun slide. "But she won't be convincing any longer. She's dead."

Tav's gaze had fixed itself on nothing, and there was an ominous, liquid sound to his breathing. "I'm glad," he said. He seemed to rally long enough to glance toward the uncovered door, where sequenced lights continued to blink expectantly. "I never knew the word. She never..." He had begun to tremble violently; Avon's hands went out to steady him, and caught him instead as he fell from the chair.

The trembling had ceased abruptly as Avon lowered him to the floor. So had the labored breathing...

*The requisite code word for access to the Complex is presidency,* Orac announced with callous precision from the tabletop. *And I must once again recommend haste. The outer worlds are already suffering chaos and the outbreak of numerous civil wars. Reprogramming and completion of the Control facility is vital!*

Presidency...

A word she would have chosen. A thing that had meant more to her than countless lives, entire worlds... or one man's family on a tiny, frontier mining planet.

Avon entered the numerical equivalent on the keypad below the flashing lights, two questions stirring in the back of his mind.

How had Orac obtained that code word?

And what had it meant by 'completion?'

Jenna, perhaps sensing the same foreboding, had drifted back into the room. "And what 'completion' is that exactly?" she asked the flashing device on the table. Orac sat clicking furiously to itself and ignored her. Jenna scowled. "Avon..."

The door hadn't opened.

Assuming the code word to be correct; assuming the numerical analog... Or perhaps not. It was a new lock but an old computer system, a Ceti 800 design, and it was just possible...

Avon keyed in the alphabetical sequence, paused expectantly... and was rewarded with nothing at all. He raised a forestalling hand to Jenna's more urgent repitition of his name.

An old system...

With every awareness of Servalan's lingering influence in all of this, he struck the ENTER key and backed away.

With a hiss of surrendering pressure, the sheet metal door vanished into the wall. The room beyond was small, a vault with silvertone sides, each lined with operating computer systems. A thin empty dais stood alone in the center.

Little doubt what that was for. She'd plotted from the start to install Orac here, to use it to further her own ends in ruling the galaxy. Now it would be used instead to free the worlds she'd conquered, and to destroy the very last vestiges of the old Federation.

Avon intended to see to it.

"Avon," Jenna said again when he turned to retrieve Orac from the table, "I don't think you ought to go in there. I don't like any of this somehow. If there's--"

She whirled toward the sound of footsteps -- and came gun to gun with Tarrant, an entourage of three at his heels. Avon saw Vila's eyes widen in dismay, lips mouthing Jenna's name in disbelief as his hand went out to stay Tarrant's weapon. Carnell, whatever he might be doing here, and a woman Avon had never seen brought up the rear. It had suddenly become rather crowded in here...

Avon hefted Orac and turned back to the newly-opened door, pre-empting both Tarrant and Jenna's simultaneous objections with a short, "Stay here."

"That room could be a deathtrap," Jenna persisted. "At least let me--"

She'd begun to come after him, but Avon had no sooner crossed Control's threshold than the door sliced shut again, cutting Jenna's protest off in mid-sentence.

Exactly the sort of move he'd have expected of Servalan. The opening gambit. He didn't doubt that the code word would now fail to re-open the door, from either side. Had she counted, he wondered, on the improbable factor of Vila's presence? Even he might find this particular lock difficult. And had she assumed that Kerr Avon wouldn't be capable of reprogramming Control? She had lured him here deliberately, of that much he was certain. But how much she may or may not have underestimated his abilities remained to be seen. Security codes could be broken and bypassed; traps found and defeated. And there existed no Federation-built computer system that he could not reprogram -- eventually.

He paused only long enough to check the transparent podium for explosives, then rather delicately sat Orac down.

The lights dimmed.

He stepped back automatically as a new light source streamed from the ceiling beyond the dais. The shimmering beam flared brilliant white before reshaping itself into the one-time President and Supreme Commander of the Terran Federation. Clad in bare-shouldered white gown and feather boa, she smiled with sanguine lips, folded her hands before her, and said, "Avon. I had meant to be here in person when you arrived, but as you can see..." The slender fingers parted, spread in dismissal, refolded themselves. "I must thank you for bringing Orac. By now it will be fully engaged in reprogramming the ancillary systems in order to assume the universal control for which it was always intended."

So much for the meaning of 'completion.'

Uncannily, the hologram matched Avon's steps back to the dais, where Orac's interior lights raced fervently.

"I'm afraid you'll find it is no longer possible to remove the activator," she said, stopping his hand just above the key. The field emitted by its electrical charge was tangible, even an inch away.

Dusky eyes that couldn't see him looked directly into his all the same, sparks flying in the crackle of the energy pillar. "We've partaken of ultimate rule together after all, you and I. We've completed Ensor's program. The original one. Orac was designed for this purpose, you see. My predecessor commissioned it three years before Ensor stole away with the plans and went into hiding. When at last it was built, and began to operate as part of Control despite Ensor's attempts at interference, he tried continually to reprogram its function. Even he could not succeed. From the moment of its first activation, Orac was linked with Star One and with the computers now located in this room. From the beginning, in fact, Orac has been in partial control, to one degree or another, of all the systems on all the worlds in all the galaxy. It required only one last thing -- the physical proximity you have now kindly provided -- to complete its programming. For that, the Federation -- and I -- will owe you a very great debt indeed."

The manicured hands fell to her sides, blood-red nails shimmering against the flawless white gown as she pivoted, gliding away to the wall and swinging round again. The energized pillar seemed to follow rather than contain her, a spotlight for the command performance.

"It really is a pity you refused my offer after Star One, Avon. I might be inclined to extend it again -- but I'm very much afraid that, by the time I arrive, it shall be too late."

So here it came at last. Challenge followed by the laying of the trap. Grimacing, he waited for her to go on.

"This room is shielded as well as hermetically sealed. The air supply is good for perhaps twelve hours, though it will hardly matter. At ten minute intervals, the vault will be bombarded with moderate doses of sobar radiation. The effects of repeated exposure vary with the individual." The smile returned, triumphant and sleekly reptilian. "It shall be most fascinating, I'm sure, to view Orac's full vis-scan report on your... duration."

 _More fascinating still,_ he thought perversely, _to know just how you would receive it -- in hell._

"Good-bye, Avon," the hologram said, and the glowing beam swept itself back into the ceiling with a crackling hiss. The room brightened at once, in tacit denial of any lethal intent.

"Orac..."

Over its accelerated hum, the computer sounded more perturbed than ever. *Yes?*

Avon spoke rapidly and concisely. "Confirm presence of sobar radiation."

*There is no detectable measurement of such radiation.*

"Confirm programming for the release of sobar radiation."

*You have just been informed of that function via system-controlled projection,* the computer huffed arrogantly. *Do not waste my time with needless--*

"Override and cancel release program. And open the door."

It couldn't, of course, have been that easy. Orac clattered for a moment before the prissy voice responded, *I think not.*

"Explain," Avon demanded. His tone was sharp, but lacked anxiety. Each twist she imparted was merely another new phase of the game. Challenge, parry, and challenge anew. Dare him to defeat the program.

*The directive is not expedient,* Orac replied.

Avon moved to the nearest perimeter console and activated its monitor screen. "Why is it not expedient?"

*Because you are the one individual capable of threatening primary Control programming. Your removal is therefore expedient.*

Not surprisingly, the keyboard failed to respond to his touch. Avon pried the lower panel free and began pulling circuit boards, checking each for signs of further sabotage before he freed it.

"Your reasoning, as usual, is erroneous," he told Orac as he worked. "There are at least five individuals besides myself who are now aware of Control's location. One well-placed bomb..." He edged to the next panel, removed it and went searching again. "...would presumably do more than 'threaten' your Control."

*Access would have to be gained first. That is now humanly impossible.*

Avon had a fleeting vision of Vila bent to the task just outside the sealed door. "Would you care to make book on that?"

*Book?* Orac echoed imperiously. *You will explain the reference.*

Gratified at the computer's increasingly agitated whine, Avon echoed in his own right, "I... think not." He pulled the next panel free.

*If you are attempting,* Orac said churlishly, *to locate release-timing circuitry, I must advise you of the presence of defensive mechanisms.*

"I'm touched by your concern." He probed lightly with one finger at the first circuit board inside the cabinet, grasped it and began to pull...

Only the sharpened reflexes of the long-hunted could have warned him of the danger in time. The emerald beam that seared from the opposite wall missed his right hand by millimeters, and burned a smoking path down the sleeve of his tunic. He rolled away, coming back to his feet in the same instant that the room lights shifted crimson.

Something high in the ceiling vibrated faintly, then quieted again as the lighting returned to normal.

Moderate doses at ten minute intervals, she had said. Prolonged exposure...

A soft power hum drew his attention back to the exposed panel -- and the laser beam that continued to bisect the room, not quite touching the pedestal of Orac's perch, and disappearing into some immune receptacle between the circuit boards.

"That," he said half to himself, "would seem to answer the question of where the release hardware is located."

*And said hardware is inaccessible,* Orac insisted. *You would be wise to heed my warning in that regard.*

Contemplatively, Avon drew his sidearm and adjusted the setting for narrow beam. "And you," he said, "would be wise to abdicate. Propoganda, for one thing, is definitely not your strong suit."

Quelling a strong temptation to fire at the dais and its occupant, he drew a bead on the laser's source instead, aimed with precision, and squeezed the trigger.

With the sizzle and pop of breaking glass, the beam vanished.

Moments later, the timing circuitry met a similar fate.

"And now..." He returned to the dais with his gun still raised, though the intimidation was probably lost on Orac. "...let us discuss this Control program."

*There is nothing to discuss!* came the rapid parry. *The program is complete.*

"To what end? Servalan is dead. The Federation no longer exists -- and the leader of your so-called 'republic' lies dead outside this door. So tell me, who rules the unwashed masses now?"

The answer was an obvious foregone conclusion. *A political successor to Par Vaylan has already been installed on Earth. The selection of figurehead is, however, of little consequence. As of the completion, I am the ultimate arbiter of human affairs in this galaxy.*

Avon blinked at the candid admission. But then, there was no longer need for Orac to evade the issue, was there? No wonder Ensor's creation had always maintained such a haughtily superior attitude.

"God in the machine," he quoted to himself.

Orac buzzed noisily. *Your reference,* it complained, *is obscure.*

"No doubt. And if humanity should choose not to be so governed? What then?"

*The question is immaterial. Access to this room has been permanently sealed.* Avon glanced involuntarily at the door. *Human intervention will no longer be possible.*

This conversation grew more bizarre with every passing moment. "For a device of such incomparable magnitude, your reasoning is rather faulty," he countered. "Or had it perhaps not occurred to you that mankind is more than capable of destroying this complex -- or the entire planet -- without access to this room at all?"

*The armament necessary for such action is universally computer controlled,* Orac snapped with condescending overtones. *It is therefore _your_ logic which is fallible. Furthermore, destruction of this complex would indirectly result in the loss of more than forty billion human lives on environmentally controlled worlds.*

Avon winced at the memory of an identical argument once presented to Blake -- before Star One.

"Well now," he said slowly. "It is entirely possible that humanity..." He felt suddenly loath to use the word. "...would consider it worth the price."

_And they would be wrong, Avon. As I was wrong._

The intrusion of Blake's voice startled him, no less so than the movement that caught his eye from the left and just behind...

Avon spun toward it with the gun, checking in time to avoid firing at his own reflection in the shiny metal wall. He realized in the same moment that his mirror image had a companion -- a reflection of something not there.

Blake.

The ghost regarded him with half a gaze, garbed in the bulky attire of a bounty hunter; the man he had last faced on Gauda Prime. Distrusting his own eyes, Avon reasoned that the radiation burst might be inducing hallucinations. Somehow, he couldn't quite convince himself that it was true.

 _Nothing to say?_ the phantom asked with every inch the commanding, dominant personality he remembered as Blake. Blake, who could convince entire planets to follow him in revolution, and whom _Liberator's_ crew had found capable of lasting trust... as well as occasional deception.

"You knew," Avon told the reflection. It was a statement of fact, neither accusation nor query.

The ephemeral Blake shook his head slowly. _Not until after Star One. It was too late to warn you then. And it wouldn't have made any difference._

"It might have made a great deal of difference -- to me." The pawn in the game found bitter acrimony in the revelation that he had been used as such by both sides of the conflict.

 _You are only one man, Avon. In the greater scheme of things, of little consequence._ The image paused, as though waiting for a response that didn't come. Then it said, _It had to be this way. In the end, it was the only answer._

Avon's anger broke free in vehement denial. "No. You were a traitor to your own cause, Blake. And I will not accept that anything 'had to be!'"

He turned and brought the weapon to bear against Orac's casing, precisely where he had long ago installed a small explosive charge -- to protect the computer from telepathic interference. Now it would serve to protect the galaxy from Orac.

He pressed the trigger three times before being forced to concede that the gun would no longer function. It, too, contained tarial circuitry...

From the wall, Blake's one-eyed stare balefully accused him of cowardice. The apparition said nothing more.

Orac, of course, was another matter.

*I will not inquire,* it fumed, *as to the significance or lack there-of inherent in your last three statements. Your weapon will no longer function. What threat you have posed to this complex is effectively neutralized. I now have a number of highly urgent matters to which to attend -- vocal circuits are therefore shutting down.*

With a brusque, electronic yowl, the computer did precisely that. Avon lowered the useless gun, noting as he did so that Blake's image was gradually fading from the wall, until only his own reflection remained.

"Fools come in many forms," he said aloud to the mirror of himself, "but each is perhaps equally guilty of underestimating the other."

Gauntlet thrown, though nothing but the wall had heard it, he went back to the open computer panels on a new quest. Primary control had been located here until the moment of Orac's arrival. That which could be completed could logically be uncompleted -- provided you knew how to cross-circuit what.

First, he needed access to an unlocked keyboard...

Four of the consoles yielded laser probes of varying sizes. The dismantled gun provided metal spanning and fine wire; the heel of his shoe, by long habit, concealed a serviceable lock pick.

It took twelve minutes, had anyone been counting, to unfreeze the keyboard; a mere four more to isolate the control linkage. It was located next to the holographic projection board, and its removal triggered the bright pillar of light anew, bringing Servalan back to glowing, artificial life.

"Avon..." the recording parroted again. He turned his back on it and continued working, using the floor for a workbench. The last two bypasses would be D to F, and A to...

*You must not complete that connection!* Orac's strident voice reasserted itself from the dais. Servalan stood just behind it, repeating her story of Ensor's plight to the air.

"If you were capable of stopping me," Avon replied with probe poised above the circuit board, "you would have done by now. Therefore..."

*This action will result in the loss of uncountable lives!* Orac protested over the hologram's continuing drone.

Avon smiled. "Incorrect. This action will interrupt your linkage and reinstate primary control to the ancillary system."

Orac harrumphed. *A useless gesture,* it opined.

"It's a beginning." The probe moved.

*We might at least discuss your reasons.* Was that a note of desperation he could hear in the computer's rising tone?

"If you are offering terms, I have only one demand." Avon lifted the laser probe, glancing back at the remaining boards in the rack.

*Yes?*

"You will reprogram the primaries for the gradual introduction of autonomy on each of the 'federated' worlds."

*Inadvisable,* Orac returned as Servalan strolled to the wall.

"Either you do it your way," Avon said, "or I do it mine. Your choice."

*You would prefer anarchy to organized control? That is madness!* the computer argued.

"Probably. Choose."

Orac whirred angrily, lights competing with the hologram's sparkling image. *Very well,* it said at last. *The program you request is instated. Now kindly return the primary control circuit to its proper place!*

Avon obliged, watching Servalan's smiling explanation of the radiation hazard. The control board back in place, he applied the laser to its nearest neighbor, carefully chose a contact point, and pressed the activator stud.

Servalan was at once engulfed in a satisfying display of fireworks as the hologram, arcing brilliant blue, dissolved into so many negative ions.

Avon rose, dropping the probe on the console. The only sound in the chamber now was Orac's somewhat-dampened whine.

"I will of course expect proof that the program is instated," he said.

Petulantly, Orac complied. *Visual diagrams will be displayed on screen H,* it informed him.

Avon scarcely glanced at the result. "Thank you," he said. "Now open the door."

Orac buzzed in a maddeningly familiar tone. *That was not a condition of the agreement.*

Somewhere there simply had to be an ultimate reward in store for those who pitted patience against the vagaries of electronic minds. Avon retrieved the probe without comment. The board controlling locking systems shouldn't be all that difficult to find...

*An experiment in governmental autonomy might be fascinating at that,* Orac pontificated from behind him. *If, however, it should prove a failure within a reasonable length of time...*

"You will be here to take over?"

*Of course.*

"Well," Avon said absently, pulling more circuitry, "we shall see about that." His head ached, and the first tinges of nausea were beginning to nag at his stomach. A brief visit to _Croesus'_ med unit and a few hours' rest certainly wouldn't come amiss just now.

*If I interpret that statement correctly,* Orac said, *it is non sequitur. Only a complex of equal or greater magnitude could possibly override this one. You will be incapable of interfering.*

Another board pulled, replaced. "We shall see about that as well."

*Assuming you were able to leave this room,* the computer theorized, *the time and vast monetary resources necessary to build an analog to this system would be beyond even your capabilities.*

That sounded remarkably like an overture. "You're certain of that, are you?"

*Since the door to this complex cannot be re-opened, the question is academic.*

In point of fact, the door's control circuit was not located with the rest, prompting Avon to hunt instead for yet another strategy. "Perhaps you would find a small wager of interest, then."

Orac's clicking slowed considerably. *Of what possible use could wagers be to me?* it queried.

"Consider it a challenge. My abilities versus your initial control programming. Say we grant the autonomy... and my resources... seven years. At the end of that time, control will fall either to you, or..." He deliberately left the sentence unfinished.

*My design and construction required twenty-one-point-nine years,* Orac said with audible hauteur. *Do you presume a sufficient intellect to surpass even Ensor's capabilities?*

"Perhaps. But then I have had the advantage of a rather close study of his prize creation. In any case, you'll never know, will you? Unless you open the door."

That gambit occupied less than twenty seconds' worth of Orac's pondering capacity. *I believe your proposal to be what is known in Earth vernacular as a bluff,* it said.

Perhaps a more direct approach. "Open the door," Avon demanded.

Orac hummed. *I think not.*

Directly on top of its statement, the door in question hissed, creaked, and withdrew under obvious protest into the wall. A triumphant Vila stood rubbing his hands together on the other side, and was nearly bowled over by the others' rush to enter the room with him. Only Carnell hung back, bodily blocking the door.

"Should have known you were too mean even for one of Servalan's traps to kill," Vila said amid the clatter of questions Avon wasn't answering. The thief surveyed the litter of makeshift tools and electronic carnage with a smug smile. "Giving old Plastic Brain here his comeuppance, were you?"

Avon favored him with a scathing look before crossing to the newly-opened door. He wheeled again to regard the dais as though none of the others had intervened.

"Well, Orac?"

For once, the flashing box did not question his meaning. *I shall reconsider your proposition,* it conceded with all the aplomb of a surrendering warlord.

"You do that."

Avon marched into the outer office with a bombardment of questions again at his heels. It was Jenna's he ultimately deigned to answer, turning back from the entrance to survey them all with a keen and newly-honed patience. After Orac, it was just possible he really could cope with anything.

Presidents, wars, rivals, ghosts... Even the spectre of his own past. The name of the endgame was still survival, whether it turned out to be your own or the rest of the galaxy's. Salvaging both was a contingency he could live with.

"What exactly are you planning to do?" Jenna had asked in her typically blunt, no-nonsense manner.

Avon's smile might almost have rivaled the brightness of Orac's winking lights.

"Well now," he said. "I find the idea of being wealthy rather appealing..."  
 

The End


End file.
